Focus on Productivity – the way to deliver consistent results

by Liam Royes, Global Product Manager

According to Proudfoot Consulting, Australia ranks 2nd to Portugal for wasted working days. The cost of this wasted labour is $78b per annum. "Wasted" working time is derived from unnecessary administration, poor IT infrastructure and a lack of or misunderstanding of business processes.

Marketing is not immune from this appraisal. A high percentage of marketers still use manual methods for budgeting, project management, copy & creative approvals and calendaring. Marketing also spends a great deal of time ‘collecting’ information just so they can report to senior management.

Traditionally, Marketing has not treated efficiency and best practice as principles necessary to achieving success. However, progressive marketers are seeing the opportunities in embracing productivity as critical to achievement of their goals.

This is supported by a report by Aberdeen Research titled "Success Strategies in Marketing Automation". Aberdeen states: "...Best-In-Class companies achieve an optimal balance of ~50% (marketing) automation... while Average and Laggard companies struggle with greater than 80% manual tasks in marketing..."

The administrative burdens and wasted time in manual methods can actually be measured quite easily. The results can often be alarming to the senior marketers. For example, a world-leading pharmaceutical company used the Lean Sigma method to measure their process durations and process failure rate. They found:

• Manual process durations were over 5 times slower than when automated
• The failure rate for particular compliance processes was nearly 90% in manual methods, compared with less than 10% when automated.

Some Marketers may see more automation as increasing administrative burden and reducing their ability to take risks. But contrast this with more progressive Marketers, who see that the productivity gained from automation gives far more scope to take risks, get to market more quickly, and achieve better results.

Orbis has seen first hand how higher productivity pays marketers back in abundance. It delivers high quality outputs and consistency in Marketing planning and execution. Marketers know that these factors in turn deliver better return on marketing investments.

As a final note, for Marketers looking to boost productivity, here are some simple steps:

• Benchmark your efficiency profile – measure particular processes and outputs against best practices; and then
• Identify the granular make-up of your major marketing processes (planning, production) and identify opportunities to improve them (or remove them);
• Introduce automation technologies to support repetitive, low-value and mundane processes. Measure processes before and after to ensure improvements and value are achieved.