As marketing operations and the supply chains that make them possible scale upwards, so too do the logistical complexities that can allow inefficiency, delays, and waste to creep into even the best-run organizations.
That’s why leading companies are actively seeking ways to improve their marketing productivity and efficiency. So says G. David Dodd at B2B Marketing Directions, who explains that new solutions in the areas of marketing supply chain logistics and marketing asset management are attracting large companies who need a better way to scale their operations.
But what exactly should companies look for in the right marketing asset management solution?
The Right Marketing Asset Management Solution Should…
1. Eliminate excessive costs for processing and fulfilling requests for marketing materials, and for storing marketing materials.
When companies look to multiple vendors for supplying, storing, processing, and fulfilling marketing materials, excessive costs find lots of places to sneak in and take effect.
The right marketing asset management solution should leverage your vendors’ systems and expertise in order to offer discounted group-buying rates. These experts should not only save your company money on processing and fulfilling requests for materials, but on the storage of materials, as well.
The right marketing asset management solution should leverage your vendors’ systems and expertise in order to offer discounted group buying rates
2. Reduce the time required to process and fulfill requests for marketing materials.
This is a big one. Estimates range from 6.5 to 8.8 hours per week that individuals spend in search of marketing materials. Why? Because of inefficiencies in the marketing supply chain.
When relying upon multiple vendors, large companies can get bogged down in the various request, approval, fulfillment and payment processes insisted upon by each vendor. What’s more, some vendors are more responsive than others, so creating coordinated marketing campaigns using multiple vendors can be costly, inefficient and extremely difficult to execute.
The right marketing asset management solution should give you, the client, one point of contact through which to file requests and handle the coordination and execution of your requests, so you can focus on the other aspects of your business.
3. Reduce the use and financial waste of obsolete marketing materials.
The right solution should have the power to discover meaningful, valuable insights about your marketing supply chain, especially when it comes to identifying inefficiencies surrounding material obsolescence.
It should show you trends in your procurement and deployment, and highlight areas where you may be buying more materials than you need, deploying less than you have available, and even when seasonal materials may be being acquired either too early or too late in the process for optimized cost and effectiveness.
6.5 to 8.8 hours per week are lost looking for marketing materials
Getting the maximum value from these marketing asset management and marketing supply chain logistics solutions depends upon choosing the right one for your business needs. Any solution provider should perform a thorough diagnostic examination of the health of your marketing supply chain, and should be able to offer recommendations, solutions, and optimizations that are tailor-made specifically for your business.
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