MMS-I Onkar Patwardhan 084

Decision-driven Marketing
Todays times ask for the marketer to fulfil a multitude of other roles than those which were
conventionally adopted. Many marketers tried to take on the challenges but were restricted either
by structural constraints or limitations in capabilities. Thus, there is a growing need to reshape
marking to bridge the gap between a marketers aspirations and what his organization can achieve.
An effective way is to identify the key decisions which prove vital for the organizations success and
thereby focus on improving the effectiveness of those decisions. Strategy and planning decisions
involves identifying business goals and matching them with customer needs. Execution decisions
have become more and more challenging due to increase in various marketing vehicles and digital
technologies. Marketing success is highly dependent on new capabilities which are addressed by
operations and infrastructure decisions. Thus, it has become important for the marketers to realize
which activities to keep in-house, which to automate and which to outsource.
Marketing has to work along with other functions to avoid bottlenecks and execute key decisions.
This is when mining the seam comes into play. It should answer questions closely related to
analytics, pricing, IT, sales, and finance and business strategy among many others.
Considering the collaboration of marketing and strategy, marketing focuses mainly on tactical
planning and execution at many places. Even though print media campaigns might be developed, the
final decision rests with the business unit heads or the product managers.
A tool like RAPID can facilitate in assigning roles for key decisions, which is often quite complex.
Taking into account the collaboration of marketing and sales, a business clich few years ago was
that these two spheres are very distinct and not very amenable for collaboration. The previous belief
can now be refuted since the collateral materials meet the needs of the sales representatives who
are confident and up-to-date. On the other hand, the representatives are free to devote more time
for actual selling which yields financial benefits too. Marketing, IT and analytics merge in the way
that cutting edge organizations are increasingly reliant on big data analytics, CRM systems and
optimization tools for marketing among a multitude of other tools. Since long back, IT has been
managing most of this technology but the scenario is changing very rapidly.
Every organization with a focus on marketing will seem to have varied importance to different
seams. Their importance widely varies from company to company and it is highly improbable to
address all seams simultaneously. But those who are successful in identifying the most vital
decisions and can learn to utilise them in a more effective manner are definitely treading on their
way to success in the field of marketing.