Where Are You on the Centralization/Decentralization Pendulum?

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Jeff Ernst

It's a constant trade-off for B2B CMOs, who want their marketing people to be totally in tune with the customers and markets they serve: how much should I decentralize by aligning people closely with business units, industries, or regions - versus how much do I centralize to maximize quality and minimize redundancy.

I know as a marketing leader, I was constantly trying to figure out the right balance, and it seems like a pendulum.  I would hire or assign a few marketing specialists to work with dotted line reporting to LOB heads, then realize that each of them were using their own tools and struggling with the same issues, so I would look for work functions that I could bring back into a centralized role.

To help marketers manage the pendulum, I recently interviewed a dozen CMOs and organizational consultants to gain insights on this. There's no single, best org structure that works for all companies, so don't ask me for one, but there are a set of drivers that can help you figure out where on the centralization/decentralization spectrum you should be for the different work streams or functions you need to perform. There are market factors, functional factors, and business factors.

For example, here are some market factors:

  • Breadth and diversity of product lines - companies with narrow or closely-related product lines can centralize more functions, whereas companies with diversified product lines will find it necessary to move people closer to each product line.
  • Similarity of market segments - Companies that serve many different markets that have distinct problems and buying behaviors need to have people on the ground in each region or industry who have specialized knowledge of that market, so there's a greater need for decentralized resources than there is in companies that have a similar go-to-market strategy for every segment.
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Showing Facebook Love On Valentine's Day

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Gina Sverdlov

Recently, social media consultancy Sociagility published an infographic showing the top brand leaders and laggards in the social media space based on a study conducted in November 2011. The infographic ranks brands based on their proprietary PRINT index, which is based on popularity, receptiveness, interaction, network reach, and trust. The top brands include Google, Disney, Starbucks, Apple, and BlackBerry. I visited these brands on Facebook and found some similarities: They each have millions of fans, they have fun and interactive brand posts, and most are wishing their fans a happy Valentine’s Day. They’re also inundated with positive comments from fans.

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PR Agencies: Adapt or Die

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DeathI’ve been wondering if the PR role is slipping and if the growth in interactive marketing will make PR agencies largely irrelevant unless they diversify and get wise to online opportunities?

Forrester’s December 2010 US Interactive Marketing Online Executive Panel Survey showed that PR agencies held a respectable fourth place when it came to which agencies are helping with company/brand interactive marketing but the same survey also showed that 68% of marketers were working with at least two or more agencies for their interactive marketing needs (all competing for budgets and control no doubt).

In the 14 months since that survey took place Interactive Marketing has continued to mature and I wonder if the full service interactive agency is growing up and gaining control - leaving the PR agency behind at the kids table.

Why is PR at risk of losing their seat at the interactive table?

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CI FAIL: The Valentine's Day Edition

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Fatemeh Khatibloo

Despite being something of a romantic, I don't really go in much for the so-called "Hallmark Holidays." In fact, this XKCD comic sums up my feelings rather perfectly:

Still, I'm very aware that lots of other people enjoy Valentine's Day, and that it's a holiday that's just begging for CI pros to get more strategic about. Leveraging shared wish lists is one use case I really like, as is intelligent (read: permission-based) householding. Imagine, for example, a travel company that enables a couple to "gift" each other a special dinner or spa treatment during a shared vacation. 

But sometimes, CI goes horribly awry, as I recently experienced with Proflowers.com. I offer Exhibit A:

This email was sent to my email address, but addressed to my ex-husband. It's not hard to understand how this could happen: householding snafus might sometimes create a false connection between an email address and a first name, for example. In the grand scheme of things, if I was going to put CI Fails on a TSA-scale rating, I'd give this one a very bright yellow.

But embarrassingly (for all involved) it got worse. Just a few days later, another of Proflowers' brands, Shari's Berries, sent me this email:

In case it wasn't obvious? I'm not Kimberly.  

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7 Steps to get started with customer experience

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Paul Hagen

While I write frequently about the rise of the Chief Customer Officerwithin firms advanced enough in their customer experience efforts to consider this kind of executive position, I often get questions at a much more basic level, such as: Where do I get started? Often an individual may get mandate from an executive to spear-head creating a greater customer focus at the company.  For those, here are 7 steps for getting started:

  1. Put together a cross functional work team of supporters. Getting involvement and buy-in from different functions across the organization is important…a working group can be a source of getting allies across the organization. Build a working group of 10-15 individuals who can help put together some foundational pieces of your customer experience effort. While having diverse functions represented on this group is important, more important at this stage are influential leaders who are put their budgets and reputations on the line in support of the effort. Look for supportive leaderswho are already actively supporting customer focused efforts or are willing to with some direction.   A great source of early supporters is the front line, where customer care and call center organizations interact regularly with customers. In addition to main marketing/branding, sales, support and operations organizations, others you may want to consider early on include market research or Customer Insights, IT, HR, and Legal/Compliance leaders.
     
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Credit where credit's due

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Steven Noble

Taking verbal swipes at Gerry Harvey and his Harvey Norman retail chain has almost become a national sport among eBusiness professionals in Australia. And given Harvey's long history of talking down online retail and talking up his own business, this is far from surprising.

But something interesting has happened over the last six months or so. The sleeping giant has woken to the importance of online retail.

At first, one could have been forgiven for underestimating the scale of the transition occurring within this company, as its first public effort — a deals site called Harvey Norman Big Buys — was unremarkable to say the least.

But then Harvey Norman launched a transactional website for its national retail chain, and suddenly the company's online strategy merited a second look.

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Selecting The Right Services Firm Can Make Or Break Your Project And Your Business

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Brian Walker

When commerce platform initiatives kick-off the discussion naturally turns to commerce platforms, order management solutions, content management, search, and many, many other point solutions. Often the question of who will help integrate the solution is left for last. This is frequently a mistake.

In fact, selecting the right services firm can make or break your project, and therefore your business. As commerce programs that reach across customer touch-points get more complex and risky, the process of selecting a services provider has become increasingly critical to businesses' success or failure. Yesterday's relatively simple eCommerce projects have become today's customer experience, business, and technology transformation programs.

These programs are not simple, and require an investment in time, money, and resources. It is not a matter of just wiring up the commerce platform, but instead a whole set of business processes, systems, and strategies will also be impacted. And these skills and expertise are very difficult to keep on staff, requiring companies to supplement with external services providers. Companies now require a multi-disciplined vendor partner to guide decisions upon which rest millions of dollars of revenue, brand differentiation, customer satisfaction, and careers.

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2012 Mobile Trends: What’s On Your Strategic Roadmap?

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Julie Ask

Let’s take a step back, first. You started as the “mobile person” two to three years ago. You siphoned a hundred thousand dollars or so from the eBusiness team budget and got a mobile optimized web site and maybe an application or two built. You measured your success by engagement – web traffic and application downloads. Maybe you measured direct revenue. Life was easy.

Two to three years later, as eBusiness professionals, you’ve got some experience with building, deploying and maintaining mobile services. You’ve added tablets to your portfolio. Hopefully you’ve convinced your organization that you need at least a 7-figure budget. Most industries have seen clear financial returns on these investments so that hasn’t been too hard. As eBusiness professionals working on mobile, you were feeling a lot of love.

In 2011, you benchmarked yourselves versus your competition. You looked at native applications by platform and key functionality on mobile web and applications. You took a deep breath and said, “ok, we’ve done it. We have mobile services. We’ve checked the box. Mobile web traffic and sales are growing. We’re good.” Perhaps others with fewer services are thinking, “I can see what we need to do. I think we can catch up if I can get some budget.”

The thing you are seeing though is – the finish line is out of sight. Mobile has only gotten more complicated – not less. No one feels comfortable. No one feels they can slow down, stop spending, or rest. Anxiety levels are high.

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2012 Mobile Trends And What They Mean For Product Strategists

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Thomas Husson

When revisiting our 2011 mobile trends, Julie Ask and I concluded that many, if not all, of them were still evolving and relevant. We have placed the main new trends for 2012 into four categories: business, ecosystem, consumer expectations, and technology.

Mobile Is A Key Business Strategy Enabler

Product strategists must work with other roles in the organization to:

  • Develop a scalable approach to delivering mobile services. Organizations will need a strategic approach to building and spreading institutional knowledge as well as governance for the development of mobile services.
  • Craft a mobile strategy that extends beyond phones. The emergence of tablets in particular will require a different approach than smartphones.
  • Differentiate on the delivery rather than the content of mobile services. In 2012, “how” mobile services are delivered will differentiate them — not what they offer.
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If Only We Had Done X (Lessons In Project Management)

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Richard Evensen

How many of you have managed consulting projects that didn’t turn out as planned and left you saying, “If only we had done . . .” ? Have you ever wondered how many steps and criteria are involved in successful consulting projects? And do you know how to avoid project failures?

In an upcoming research report, “Five Stages To Optimize The Research Process,” Forrester will lay out the five key stages, 30-plus key steps, and 130-plus key criteria identified in successful consulting projects. Not all criteria are equal and required for every project, but miss some key criteria and project steps and you could have a project crisis (or expensive failure) on your hands.

Some highlights for each of the key project stages:

  • Preparing. We identified 33 key criteria that help MI professionals avoid rushing into the project design without having a clear idea of potential gains and risks, timelines, and threats and how they will prove value-add.
  • Designing. Forrester found 36 key criteria to help build successful project designs. Some of the most overlooked were identifying all the stakeholders, their expectations, capabilities, and timing so that deliverables were designed from the start to be stakeholder-aligned.
  • Implementing.From finalizing scope to RFPs, final project plans, and kick-offs, Forrester found 27 criteria involved in making sure your project gets off on the right foot. Like creating a deliverable template that matches the goal and making sure that everyone is on the same page with what they need to do by when so that you don’t crash your timelines.
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