Our industry is facing new challenges. As marketers we are expected to do more with less. At the same time, the marketing world is full of bright and shiny objects these days. We have a tendency to run after too many of those shiny objects while the real challenge is to focus, align, plan, communicate and execute the marketing strategy on select, vital business drivers to give you a competitive advantage.
The managed decline of printed information, the diversity of audiences and the need for multi-channel communication force us to align all marketing disciplines and have a bird’s eye view across all marketing activities. The number and types of marketing processes has multiplied. The need for marketing efficiency and the need for an increase of the speed-to-market is higher than ever. It is therefore not surprising that Marketing Resource Management is now one of the fastest growing segments of the CRM industry.
Industry terms
Digital asset management, marketing resource management, marketing operations management and enterprise marketing management.
As the market is growing and maturing, so are the number of terms - and perhaps as a consequence there is some confusion over what these terms stand for. Our view is that it is often difficult for a marketer or communications professional to know what type of system they require based on these industry definitions.
Marketing Resource Management (MRM) provides the software infrastructure to support Marketing Operations Management. Marketing Operations Management is the alignment of people, process and technology to support marketing activities and improve marketing effectiveness. The growing importance of an effective MRM strategy is reflected by the number of leading organizations which are following this path, with implementations of software provided by some of the leading technology vendors operating in this space. This growth is also reflected in the growing importance of the marketing operations role in organizations.
MRM generally refers to technology for the areas of planning, design and production within marketing and MRM solutions do not provide the analytics, decisioning and automated execution capabilities for personalized marketing across channels. MRM is a subset of Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) solutions which provide more complete capabilities for all of the functions and roles within the marketing.
It has been a decade since the inception of MRM, when Gartner first defined it. Many midsize and large companies have begun to explore, invest in and implement MRM solutions. The next 10 years will see a new generation of MRM functionality. Many of these functions will expand the traditional competencies of MRM into new directions, further improving efficiencies, reducing costs, optimizing resources and driving more-effective marketing programs.