Market Effectiveness – The 12 Critical Marketing and Sales Software Systems

Market Effectiveness™ is about how well you service your marketplace and your customers. It includes how you create products and services. It also covers how you market, sell and service them, and how you manage the product revenue lifecycle. Planning, measuring, and managing market effectiveness is the most important activity in every enterprise. Market Effectiveness drives profitable growth.

Companies now use far more complex technologies and business processes to interact with their customers. That is because technology and changing customer needs have dramatically changed how companies go to market. This article talks about the marketing and sales software systems that affect a company’s Market Effectiveness.

The Components of Market Effectiveness

First, let’s look at the components of Market Effectiveness in the graphic below. This will help you understand the impact of technology on Market Effectiveness.

A company’s strategic plan should be the blueprint for driving all activities. Effective technology backbones provide customer insights and market intelligence. These help leadership teams create an effective strategic plan and know “Where To Play” in the marketplace. In addition, using technology to understand customer preference and behavior drives decisions on product portfolio management and product development. As a result, these three segments of Market Effectiveness prepare the company to sell to its customers. All three depend heavily on technology.

How Customers Buy: The Customer Journey Map

That leaves marketing and sales. In fact, 82% of customers (both D2C and B2B) use the internet to learn about products in the marketplace. They also use it to identify places to buy the product they want. To understand how technology impacts customer behavior, it helps to look at the customer journey map below.

The first challenge is to make customers aware of your products. This challenge applies to both Direct to Consumer (D2C) and Business to Business (B2B) marketplaces. It applies equally well to products and services. Once customers are aware, the next challenge is to educate them on the Value Proposition of your products and services. You also need to explain what differentiates your offering from your competition. Then, direct customers to an appropriate place to buy your products and services. Finally, once a customer makes a purchase, sales and marketing strategies include post sales activities. These activities follow up, improve and encourage advocacy. Technology drives these activities as well.

The Technology Behind Market Effectiveness

Group50® Consultants define business through three cross functional processes: Market Facing, Technology backbone and Value-Added activities. The graphic below illustrates them.

The list below highlights the technology systems that drive high level Market Effectiveness. However, many newer systems have multiple capabilities, which we describe below. As a result, companies may not need to buy all standalone systems.

Customer and Sales Software Systems

1. CRM

Customer relationship management (CRM) is software that manages, tracks and stores information about your company’s current and future customers. It provides a centralized database of customer information. Anyone in the organization can access it. As a result, they get a complete customer history and the insights they need.

2. Order Management

Order management is important for businesses so that they can properly service their customers. Some CRM systems have order management capabilities. However, most companies use their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to manage the production of orders and delivery of services.

3. Contract Management

Contract management systems provide a central repository for companies to manage their contractual requirements with vendors and customers. Unfortunately, most companies do not manage contracts well. As a result, they waste a lot of time figuring out their true obligations.

Product, Project and Design Software Systems

4. Project Management

Project Management software has three critical roles in Market Effectiveness:

1. Implementation of new business software systems
2. Design and development of custom product configurations.
3. Product development

Cloud based Project management systems provide a central repository. Stakeholders can see the status of complex projects there and communicate with the project team.

5. Quote Management

Just about every customer has a unique buying program in the B2B space. For example, they get special discounts and different terms and conditions. Companies often manage this inside an ERP system. However, a quote management system is important for custom products.

6. Product Lifecycle Management and Content Management Systems (CMS)

Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems manage the entire lifecycle of a product from start to finish. In addition, most PLM systems centralize all content related to the product. This includes, but is not limited to, pictures, graphics, marketing materials, videos and other important content. Sales and marketing people use this content on a routine basis.

7. Computer Aided Design CAD – Computer Aided Manufacturing CAM

CAD/CAM software is an integral part of designing products and making them producible in the factory. These systems significantly improve speed to market and product design quality. They also serve as a repository for product design documentation.

Marketing and Digital Presence Software Systems

8. Email Marketing and Marketing Automation Software

Email marketing and marketing automation software provide the benefit of making customers sticky. When you apply them properly, these systems address the six pillars of the customer journey map. They provide routine communications with a company’s customer base. In short, these systems are critical to successful customer acquisition and customer retention strategies.

9. Website(s) and SEO

Every company should have a website. There are cloud-based systems that can handle the entire customer transaction. Websites provide important product and services content that addresses many of the elements of the customer journey map. Moreover, websites have become a major asset to all companies. Their content forms the basis for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is a process for optimizing web content, and it highlights the content you want search engines to focus on. Therefore, these two software systems go hand in hand for Market Effectiveness.

10. eCommerce Portals

As consumers, Amazon, Walmart, UPS, USPS and many others have spoiled us. They allow us to have an account and see the status of our orders through notifications. As a result, we have begun to expect this from every supplier we deal with. Your customers expect it too, which makes eCommerce Portals a basic requirement.

Data and Intelligence Software Systems

11. Business Intelligence

Many clients we deal with have a lot of data and little information. Business Intelligence systems are necessary to make sense of that data. These systems provide information about the demographics of your customer base. They also show what customers bought, how much they spend and what they prefer. The interface with Point of Sale (POS) systems is an important part of this. It matters if you do business with Bricks and Mortar companies.

12. Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence is all the rave. Many companies are adopting these systems to accelerate designs, create labels and marketing materials. Applied properly, AI systems can significantly reduce time to market and increase productivity in the product management function.

OMNI Channel Strategy and the 6 A’s

The above 12 software systems make up the elements of a company’s OMNI Channel strategy. At Group50® Consulting, we define OMNI channel through the 6 A’s:

1. Digitally Acquire research on your products and services
2. Buy from your company Anything you sell
3. Do it Anytime
4. From Anywhere
5. Using Alternate payment methods and have
6. Access to the status of their order always

Choosing the Right Systems for Your Company

Market Effectiveness fully depends on a company’s OMNI Channel strategy. This strategy will make or break success. As noted earlier, every company will likely need only a subset of these 12 systems. However, making those choices can be a daunting task. Those choices depend on the size of the company, the markets it serves and its unique customer journey map. It is important to create the digital technology strategy for the company. Therefore, implement a building block approach. That way, as the company grows, it doesn’t need to scrap previous systems and efforts.

Your technology choices should also start with strategy. That is where the Business Hierarchy of Needs® helps. BHNOS is Group50’s change management framework for turning strategy into results. For example, BHNOS begins with your Value Proposition. As a result, the systems you choose will support what makes your offering different.

Get Expert Help With Your OMNI Channel Strategy

Most companies engage a consulting firm to help them craft an appropriate OMNI Channel strategy. The firm also helps them choose the right combination of technologies. These technologies must support the business both in its current state and in its future state, which its business strategies define.

Group50^® Consulting is uniquely suited to help create and implement those strategies. We use our Marketing and Sales expertise as well as our Digital Technology Consulting Practice. To talk to a Digital Technology subject matter expert, call +1(626) 644-9746. You can also drop us a line at info@group50.com, or request more information here.

About the Author: Jim Gitney is the CEO and founder of Group50^® Consulting. The firm has worked with over 200 companies to improve their top line performance and bottom-line results. Jim and the Group50^® team specialize in working with D2C and B2B companies. They fully understand the current challenges in marketing and sales as well as optimized supply chains. Group50 clients routinely see a 10X return on their consulting investment. You can see some of the clients and results of their efforts here.

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