Part I of this blog post series, I discussed the issues that led National Instruments (NI) to transform our marketing technology, and delved into our marketing performance management (MPM) technology selection process.
Our analysis of MPM vendors led us to ultimately choose Allocadia – largely because of the breadth and size of their marquee customers. Companies including Red Hat, Juniper Networks, and CA Technologies showed trust in the Allocadia technology and team. That spoke volumes to us because this was not a short-term technology purchase. We needed a partner who could support us and grow with us over time.
Our technical considerations included strong integrations with our sales force automation system (Salesforce) and marketing automation platform (Eloqua). Because a major goal of this transformation was to establish a holistic view of our technology, we needed the ability to integrate systems. The technology we chose also had to be highly scalable, with no latency issues, so that our global team could rely on it. Finally, marketing budgeting and financial information were both critical and sensitive, so the security of the system was a major part of our decision process.
Here the rest of the keys to our successful marketing technology transformation:
The results
Campaign managers now have insight into investment across regions for their respective campaigns in new ways, so they can operate in a way they never could before. MPM is a critical enabler of greater transparency, visibility and accountability across the marketing organization.
With MPM, technology allowed us to move away from practicing our rearview mirror insight into investment to planning and budgeting looking forward. It allowed us to ensure structure and governance across our planning and budgeting process. We can adjust the investment plan depending on performance as we progress through the year.
Allocadia enables this structure in our budgeting and investment process so that we can align our investment with our go-to market plan objectives. Because of our aligned and managed taxonomy and complete adoption of the tool, we can now view our marketing plan investment across multiple dimensions – by campaign, media type, tactic and region – and ensure they are fully aligned with the way our regional marketing organizations execute.
By combining the insight from this MPM tool, outcomes in Eloqua and Salesforce, and our aligned taxonomy, we can create cohesion, organization and clarity in a formerly obscure process.
This transformation is by no means complete. We’re always striving to improve on our process and adoption, but we are moving in a better, more informed direction. To date, we’ve gained more effective insights and transparency throughout the marketing organization. Our team has greater accountability and insight into our performance, which generates more informed and more strategic conversations. At the end of the day, we are more confident than ever in how we invest our budget and plan for growth.