Customer Engagement

III. Operational Capabilities of Marketing

• Execution of strategy entails operational capabilities that comprise systems, processes, accountabilities, and technology
• Strategy execution directs available resources to achieve competitive advantage
• Specialized organizational charts that we call Capability-Resource Charts depict how a marketing operation gets things done, including accountabilities by individual and the contributions (workflow inputs and outputs) by individual staff, sub-contractors, vendors, and business process outsource providers.
• Maturity models for operational capabilities of marketing define the active contribution of discreet resource-capabilities as well as what systems to build, buy, or rent.
• Marketing needs its own enterprise database, integrating data from these data sources:
  • Suspect-buyer data sources: bingo cards, bartered lists, warranty cards, promotional contexst, etc.
  • Prospecting database: emails, guest book submissions, and other sources of likely sales prospects
  • Subscriber database: active newsletter subscribers and webinar participants — also known as interactive sales leads.
  • Sales force automation database: sales prospect contacts and interaction histories, including business or household profile and buying criteria as deduced from a qualification form or sales interactions.
  • Operational CRM database: customer transactions, help-desk cases, returns, re-orders, credit levels, and other business record information.
  • Analytic data mart: fast cycle train-of-thought analysis of large databases enhanced with compiled data such as credit histories, corporate profiles, and other economic data overlays.
  • Targeted messaging database: linkage of customer preferences and transaction histories to particular messaging, imagery, and written copy, enabling correlation of individual messaging and customer behavior.

IV. Centers of Excellence

• Centers of Excellence (CoE) define the operational capability of a small but meaningful group of innovation leaders:
  • CoE’s deliver business results with an explicit or implicit Service Level Agreements (SLA) that specify technical parameters for meeting or exceeding agreed-upon levels and quality of service.
  • CoE’s define acceptable and unacceptable inputs to their process as well as outputs or business results.
  • CoE’s use a profit-and-loss metrics within a three-year operational business plan to guide ongoing investments in new technologies, systems, and training.
  • CoE’s commit to continuous, ongoing cost and cycle time reductions
• Independent observers validate the process-maturity of Centers of Excellence by referencing discreet resource-capabilities and functions of a particular phase of process maturity
• Digital value chains provide an explicit structure for depicting the integration of multiple CoE’s.
• Within the enterprise, CoE’s include:
  • Marketing operations
  • Sales operations
  • Social media operations
  • Service operations
  • Web operations
• We anticipate that a variety of shared or outsourced service providers will include these CoE’s:
  • Analysis-driven dynamic messaging
  • Collaboration and instant workspaces
  • Content optimization and text mining operations
  • Media collaboration and proofing operations
  • Multichannel marketing analytics
  • Social marketing and viral video operations
  • Social networking and community operations
  • User-generated video and content management operations
  • Webcasting
• CoE’s leverage a web business ecosystem, requiring that businesses develop a suitable business model and systems for partnering with external CoE’s
• The journey to become a CoE starts with a realistic assessment of current-state operational capabilities within a process-maturity model and the next-step deployment of what we call entry-point solutions or enabling capabilities.