Integrating Marketing Procurement

Lisa was a good marketing procurement director. She worked with marketing to get a good specification of work, she set strong but achievable KPIs that were well benchmarked, she ran good processes, she had a template contract that she applied religiously, and she counted the savings truly, and honestly.

She cared passionately about her company, Acme Inc, and was concerned and upset because Acme’s marketing was failing.

Each department within marketing had its own requirements and resources – Acme had over twenty external suppliers. There were considerable overlaps, still some gaps, but most of all just turf wars. These agencies were not able to work together to create effective ideas, efficiently. The marketing team wanted to add yet more agencies, which they could ill afford.
Lisa knew the system was broken, and so did marketing, but she knew what she knew, and not what she did not know, so was unable to help.

One day Lisa was sitting in a marketing procurement conference, and as a new convert to twitter, was scanning her feed. She came across an article about Integrated Marketing Procurement, and slowly things began to make sense.

The article explained how Integrated Marketing Procurement is the third stage of procurement; following basic scoping/contract work, and roster consolidation. It explained that it will yield the greatest benefits of the three phases, with over a third of all marketers expecting savings in excess of 20% of their total agency budget – if they can get their agencies better integrated. 70% of marketers thought they would get a 10% improvement in marketing ROI via better integration.

Lisa read about how there is a “secret sauce” of contractual clauses that can be appended to agency contracts to help drive integration, and make savings.

She saw that technology could eliminate duplicated man power and democratise data, leading to further savings.

Lisa smiled when she heard that if all the agencies shared just one common definition of the target audience it would eliminate c.10% of total fees, but also lead to much better integrated work, because all agencies would be targeting the same consumer.

If the agencies and marketing teams filled in an integrated “Content Calendar”, then a smart “Content Factory” could be built. This Content Factory allowed the huge amounts of extra Content the marketers now needed in the Social Media Age, to be produced at a far lower cost.

Lisa knew that just a simple integrated process that every department and agency could follow would lead to hundreds of less meetings a year, less rework, and more time for thinking and creative work.

And, so the article went on to discuss a common appraisal system used to drive integration, the development of an integrated plan format to make things more effective, and even the development of an integrated marketing team culture.

The article included a helpful infographic to explain Integrated Marketing Procurement to others in her team.

CLICK HERE FOR: THE FLOCK INFOGRAPHIC – INTEGRATED MARKETING PROCUREMENT 

Lisa knew it all made sense. She knew she could make a real difference and find real efficiency. She knew if she did not act now, things would get worse. Lisa knew that marketing would welcome the concept but was a bit apprehensive, of course, as she had not tried integrated marketing procurement before. Lisa wanted someone to help her set up the systems and help her discuss the topic with marketing…..

If you would like help reaping the rewards of Integrated Marketing Procurement then do give us a call or e-mail the first and only Marketing Integration Company HERE.

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