Covalent Marketing: 10 Questions to Ask Before Implementing Marketing Software
Chicago, IL (PRWEB) March 31, 2014 -- Covalent Marketing, the customer intelligence consultancy, shares ten important questions that businesses need to ask themselves before a marketing software implementation.
“Too many businesses neglect the upfront planning process for implementing marketing technology, which can lead to issues like layering marketing software over a poor marketing process only to yield a poor ‘automated’ marketing process,” said Ryan Kosanic, chief executive officer at Covalent Marketing. “To help companies prevent these types of mishaps, we came up with a list of the top ten questions marketers should ask themselves to maximize their ROI before taking on a marketing technology implementation.”
1. How well is the current marketing process understood?
Without a solid understanding of how things work today, it will be much harder to apply similar processes using a new tool.
2. Is there a clearly defined scope and success criteria for the implementation?
Have a clear idea of what marketing software will improve by creating a list and always
keeping those goals in mind. Sticking to the list will help avoid scope changes mid-implementation. Scope changes often lead to compromised expectations or an overall implementation timeline that’s longer and more expensive than initially anticipated.
3. What resources will be involved?
A project manager that works with the internal stakeholders like the executive sponsor, IT team and marketing department is critical to staying on-time and being successful.
4. Is there a solid understanding of the implementation project timeline and how the internal team can keep the project on track?
Creating an accurate timeline for the internal project delivery team is important for maintaining quality; rushing to finish often means more work later.
5. What key performance indicators (KPIs) will be compared before and after implementation?
Measuring the change in KPIs is an excellent way to gauge improvement and will help paint a picture of overall return on the software investment.
6. Is there a user adoption plan?
Users may require training before, during & after implementation and higher rates of adoption lead to increased ROI.
7. Is there a solid organizational structure and internal help desk plan for the new software?
Having internal resources (marketing and IT) with clearly defined roles and responsibilities will provide clarity when questions or issues arise.
8. How will marketing processes align with the software investment?
Implementations are a good time to re-evaluate and re-create business processes. Often, re-designed business processes will boost the overall efficiency gain for your business, especially when they factor in the new software’s capabilities.
9. How will this fit into the larger enterprise marketing architecture?
Understand how the marketing software fits into the larger enterprise marketing technology ecosystem. Based on what the architecture looks like today and in a desired future state, this can influence decisions around project timing, hardware/software configuration, and even the software vendor chosen.
10. What about reporting and analytics?
Will the reports provided with the software be sufficient or will there be a need for custom reports and the ability to build reports in the future? Needing more robust reporting and analytics may require additional planning, software and/or hardware.
Covalent Marketing
At Covalent Marketing, our vision is clear – make every marketer smarter. We are a customer intelligence consultancy focused on simplifying and strengthening companies’ customer interactions and marketing operations. With a powerful combination of customer analytics, experimentation and thought leadership, Covalent Marketing solves complex customer problems to deliver business success. Check out the Covalent Marketing blog for fresh insights on marketing technology at http://covalentmarketing.com/read-our-blog.
Jim McNulty, StandPoint Public Relations, +1 (508) 481-2024, [email protected]
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