1. Support Enterprise Marketing with World-Class IT
The marketing landscape needs to be supported by a smart technology strategy. Evaluate which marketing services are right for your organization and review IT support requirements.
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2. Introduction
IT is failing to provide Marketing with marketing automation (MA) technology, resulting in underperformance and strained resources. Your organization needs to implement MA technology to enable marketing success.
This research is designed for CIOs
who want to:
This research will help you:
Assess the need for marketing, lead management, and comprehensive enterprise marketing management solutions.
Enable superior marketing success while reducing IT involvement in day-to-day marketing operations.
Be seen as an innovator and strategic partner by the CMO, Sales Director, and CEO.
Precisely identify the technology your organization needs by evaluating how well marketing, lead management automation (LMA), and enterprise marketing management (EMM) solutions meet the needs of your marketing department.
Select the appropriate vendor through the creation of requests for proposal (RFP) and a structured evaluation of vendor proposals.
Optimize the value of vendor demonstrations using a vendor demonstration script.
Understand best practices for implementation and develop policies that ensure good governance of marketing technology.

3. Executive Summary Situation:
Marketing has evolved to focus on channels that are driven by technology. The functionality of marketing automation software has increased to enable superior efficiency and better results.
IT is failing to provide the technology that Marketing needs, resulting in marketing underperformance, shadow IT, a deteriorating relationship between departments, and a demand for IT involvement in day-to-day marketing operations.
Complications:
There is a limited understanding within IT about what marketing automation technology is, how it can benefit the organization, and how IT can assist in procurement and integration.
IT and Marketing struggle to get budgetary approval for marketing automation, marketing, and lead management platforms.
Even when technology is procured and implemented, poor governance often leads to underperformance.
Plan of Action:
IT must lead the marketing automation enablement effort by identifying the precise technology that the organization needs.
IT must get stakeholder buy-in by promoting the key benefits of the technology and presenting the business case.
IT must champion vendor selection by comparing vendor proposals to organizational requirements and cost constraints.
IT must craft smart policies to ensure good governance and develop a strategy for user training and technology deployment.

4. How to use this blueprint
There are multiple ways you can use this Info-Tech Best-Practice Blueprint in your organization. Choose the option that best fits your needs:
Do-It-Yourself Best-Practice Toolkit
Onsite
Workshops
Free Guided
Implementation
Do-It-Yourself Implementation
Use this Best-Practice Blueprint to help you complete your project. The slides in this Blueprint will walk you step-by-step through every phase of your project with supporting tools and templates ready for you to use.
Project Accelerator Workshop
You can also use this Best-Practice Blueprint to facilitate your own project accelerator workshop within your organization using the workshop slides and facilitation instructions provided in the Appendix.
We recommend that you supplement the Best-Practice Blueprint with a Guided Implementation.
For most Info-Tech members, these Guided Implementations are included in your membership plan.* Our expert analysts will provide telephone assistance to you and your team at key project milestones to review your materials, answer your questions, and explain our methodology.
Info-Tech Research Group’s expert analysts will come onsite to help you work through our project methodology in a 2-5 day project accelerator workshop. We take you through every phase of the project and ensure that you have a road map in place to complete your project successfully. In some cases, we can even complete the project while we are onsite.
Book your workshop now by ing:
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Or calling:
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5. Guided Implementation points in the Support Enterprise Marketing with World-Class IT project
Book a Guided Implementation Today: Info-Tech is just a phone call away and can assist you with your project. Our expert Analysts can guide you to successful project completion.
Here are the suggested Guided Implementation points in the support enterprise marketing project:
Section 2: Determine Investment Appropriateness
Evaluate the appropriateness of marketing, LMA, and EMM solutions. An Info-Tech analyst will discuss how your current marketing and IT processes affect technology appropriateness. Working with the analyst, you will reach a decisive verdict on the technology you need to pursue.
Section 3: Create a Selection Strategy
Identify the vendor that works best for you. An Info-Tech analyst will help you review vendor proposals and identify unmet requirements and pricing. The analyst will walk you through the Marketing Automation Technology Selection Tool and help you determine the vendor that best suits your organization.
Section 4: Implementation and Establishing Good Governance
Craft smart policies that promote good governance. An Info-Tech analyst will examine common pitfalls for your marketing automation technology and your organization’s unique business requirements. Together, you will craft policies that are designed to ensure the platform is adopted, used correctly, and maintained.
This symbol signifies when you’ve reached a Guided Implementation point in your project.
To enroll, send an to or call and ask for the Guided Implementation Coordinator.

6. Make the Case for Supporting Marketing with World-Class IT
What’s in this Section:
Sections:
Key drivers of marketing automation technology adoption.
Pain points associated with insufficient marketing technology.
Risks of failing to deliver adequate marketing technology.
Overview of how IT is uniquely positioned to facilitate technology enablement.
Make the Case for Supporting Marketing with World-Class IT
Determine Investment Appropriateness
Create a Selection Strategy
Implement and Establish Good Governance

7. Are you failing to adequately support Marketing?
If any of these concerns sound familiar, you need to act quickly. Follow this blueprint to provide Marketing with the technology they need to succeed.
Concerns:
IT Department: “Supporting marketing is a huge resource drain! We have to be involved in day-to-day operations such as campaigns and data maintenance. Furthermore, we are constantly responsible for lengthy integration. Marketing procures technology without asking IT to help with vendor selection.”
Marketing: “We just don’t have the technology we need to succeed. With the right tools, routine campaigns and analytic functions could be automatic, but we are stuck doing things manually and waiting for IT to assist. We can’t generate enough sales-ready leads with our archaic technology.”
Sales: “We are not getting the leads we need to generate revenue. Sometimes, we have no leads from marketing and have to resort to cold calling. Other times, there are too many leads submitted simultaneously, and the leads go cold before our reps can call them!”
MA technology can help.
Sales IT
Marketing MA MA
MA technology can go beyond coordinating marketing, sales, and IT. It can automate this, improving the performance of all three functions while saving resources.
MA technology can help. The three major types of MA software are marketing services, lead management automation (LMA) suites, and enterprise marketing management (EMM) suites.

8. This blueprint will help you overcome the common roadblocks that prevent MA technology enablement
Each of the challenges below will be addressed by the methodology presented in this blueprint.
Challenge: Tight Budgets
Seeking budgetary approval for marketing technology may be difficult. The CFO will be reluctant to approve investments unless the benefits are clear and quantifiable.
Present the benefits MA technology can deliver to your organization and a clear picture of major costs.
Challenge: Weak Relationships with
Business Units
Marketing may prefer to rely on internal power users and be hesitant to include IT.
Foster collaboration by emphasizing how IT can help Marketing reach goals. Establish cross-functional teams to lead the project.
Challenge: Difficulty Defining Requirements
Marketing has not explicitly outlined what it needs. Marketing may not know what MA technology can do in the first place.
Walk marketing executives and key sales executives through structured interviews and use cases to elicit requirements.
Challenge: Poor governance
Poor governance undermines system adoption and performance.
Establish policies that promote good governance by ensuring technology adoption, proper use, and maintenance.
The question is NOT “should Marketing procure MA technology?”
MA technology is going to be procured with or without IT’s approval. IT needs to mobilize quickly to act as a strategic partner, helping Marketing ensure a strong business case exists, all requirements are met, a capable vendor is selected, and policies ensure good governance.

9. IT must lead the charge and enable Marketing and Sales with MA technology
While there is no shortage of challenges to overcome, IT is uniquely positioned to spearhead technology enablement and champion MA technology. The apex of revenue generation is achieved when marketing, sales, and IT functions are closely intertwined and focused on achieving shared strategic objectives. Understand these key reasons why IT should champion the MA technology enablement effort:
IT should be a part of the business just like any other department. Strategic ideas should also come from IT.
- CIO, Healthcare Industry
You don’t know what you need because you have no clue what [marketing automation] can do. Night and day isn’t even enough contrast.
- Bryan Martin, SVP. Global Operations and CRM, Caliper Corp.
Leveraging an enterprise-wide, cross-silo view: IT is already involved in supporting Marketing and Sales in some capacity. This provides IT with a view of core technologies in each silo.
Capitalizing on vendor management: IT has developed procurement expertise and can assist in vendor evaluation and negotiating contracts.
Driving value from unique understanding of new channels: Social and mobile have exploded, and marketing and sales employees may not understand what is possible on these digital channels. IT can play the role of an educator, informing Marketing how it can tap into new segments using MA technology.
Understanding of evolving technology capabilities: The capabilities of marketing, LMA, and EMM platforms have exploded, and it is IT employees that often have the best understanding of the space. 1 2 3 4
If IT doesn’t lead the charge, then Marketing will depend on internal power users to oversee technology enablement. IT will still have to integrate the platform and will be responsible for technology failure. Be involved from the beginning to ensure systems are compatible.

10. Determine Investment Appropriateness
What’s in this Section:
Sections:
Key drivers behind marketing service adoption.
Key drivers behind lead management automation (LMA) adoption.
Key drivers behind enterprise marketing management (EMM) adoption.
Determine which MA technology is right for you.
Make the Case for Supporting Marketing with World-Class IT
Determine Investment Appropriateness
Create a Selection Strategy
Implement and Establish Good Governance

11. Pick the right MA technology for your organization
As marketing platforms and LMA platforms increase their functionality, they are expected to converge with EMM suites. However, this is not expected to occur in the next three years. Understand the differences to identify the right technology for your organization.
Organizations that need full marketing management capabilities including resourcing, formally managing budgets, and that regularly have complex marketing campaigns across multiple products and product lines.
Market: B2B, B2C
Enterprise Marketing Management
Channel: , Web, Social, Events, Print
Organizations that focus on lead management, lead nurturing, and lead scoring. Organizations using LMA have a strong mandate to increase sales-ready leads, and offer high price point products.
Market: B2B
Lead Management
Functionality
Channel: , Web, Social
Marketing
Perfect for organizations looking to conduct mass campaigns. Use this technology when the primary goal is customer interaction, not when looking for a solution to help generate sales.
Market: B2B, B2C
Channel:
Small organizations with less than ten marketing employees may not even require an marketing service. Internal ad-hoc management may be sufficient, and marketing can also be outsourced to third parties.

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