Standard Chartered Bank

Someone said, ‘Aim for Progress, Not Perfection’. This quote epitomizes the quest for achieving customer centric engagement using the MarTech stack. Most organizations are constantly wondering as to why their investments in MarTech are not leading to the perfect outcome that technology vendors promised. To make matters worse, the crème de la crème of consulting companies keep coming up with new acronyms (I am sure you have heard of CDP) to make us data driven practitioners realize that there is more that we need to do. And alas! We wonder “Were we not told the same thing last time? While the acronym was different but promise sounded same”.

So, what is the truth? In my view, the answer is usually in the middle. Achieving MarTech maturity is like an always-on campaign. You need to run the campaign every-month but ensure that insights are utilized to optimize it so that performance continues to improve. Similarly, building a data driven customer centric MarTech stack is a like a marathon that needs to be run in short Sprints. While length of this marathon is defined by multiple factors like competition, consumer expectations, changing technology landscape, etc., it is the Sprints that we need to keep an eye on to measure success towards hitting the finish line.

I have found following principles useful when deciding on accuracy of direction and what needs to be done to accelerate momentum towards finish line.

A. Validate the original promise: Check if you are hitting measurable goals that were set out during initiation of the program. Have the early use cases delivered results? Do you continue to build at pace as originally envisaged or have you slowed down investments in specific areas? Did you add run teams to operationalize MarTech or run is lagging build? Did you modify processes to make organization agile or are they hindrance to operationalizing new stack? Typically, MarTech programs should deliver results within 6 months and tend to pay forward within 12-18 months. Besides 6 monthly review of business benefits achieved; I will also recommend forced review at 18-month mark.

If you are directionally hitting original benchmarks every 6 monthly Sprint, I will suggest continuing the path towards marathon.

B. Stick to basics: Data driven customer engagement is about building intelligent experience engines by sticking to basics in 5 areas i.e. a) Connecting data signals and insights from range of sources; b) Enabling a layer of automated decisions on top of these data sources; c) Activating these decisions at scale as experiences across channels to engage customers; d) Making available set of reports and dashboards from these engagements so that automated decisions continue to improve – typically a layer of adaptive intelligence and e) Continuing to ingest new features within the stack to improve array of use cases.

If Sprints continue to add to above 5 basic goals, you should be on track to winning marathon.

C. Periodic Pulse Check: A 6 monthly pulse check survey with senior sponsors as well as practitioners can help to gauge level of engagement within the organization. E.g., Do we continue to enjoy sponsorship and experience similar excitement as at the time of original kick-off? Internal engagement is usually the deciding factor towards achieving measurable business impact.

I would suggest looking at NPS score trends for this survey as early indicator of need for review.

D. Changing technology landscape: With power of cloud computing, advances in artificial intelligence and access to fluid architectures, ability to construct MarTech leapfrogs every few years. E.g., if you originally planned to buy a campaign management platform in year 2 of the program, should you still go ahead and buy traditional multi-channel marketing platforms built on legacy stack or review maturity of new age platforms like journey orchestration platforms or CDP?

I will typically suggest reviewing MarTech roadmap every 18 months before making next big purchase.

E. Keep an eye on Organizational change: Finally, organizational changes are a constant and such changes can disrupt sponsorship, delay momentum, create confusion leading to unintended impact on your MarTech roadmap. Critical that you keep an eye on same to ensure that value being delivered from MarTech stack is consistently communicated across management team. Any miss here can potentially reduce the business impact of MarTech program.

I see any organizational change as an opportunity to supercharge sponsorship and revitalize MarTech roadmap. However, if ignored can lead to loss of narrative for MarTech.

Organizations can typically ask themselves many more questions, however in my view above 5 tend to produce robust analysis. The most important thing to remember is that no one understands your organization better than yourself. So always ask these questions before you invite another herd of ivy league consultants to guide you on next big thing in MarTech space. Remember, you will need that next big thing only if you do well on the first big thing you ventured into. Happy customer engagement!