Over time flaws tend to creep into marketing processes, making them less efficient or effective. Causes include:

• Changing administrative requirements placed upon the marketing organization.
• Ineffective information management.
• Breakdown of information technology. Staff set up isolated systems that must be manually updated to stay current.
• Rapid growth.

How do you know you have a problem?
Flaws become evident in a variety of ways:

• One indication is an increase in work backlogs.
• Another sign of inefficiency is the existence of multiple different procedures for the same work.
• Information systems produce operational information that is not sufficiently used, or superfluous information makes decision making and reporting more time consuming.
• Or, when the relationship between the output of the marketing department and the number of staff members required to deliver it changes.

Rapid Marketing Process Improvement
Our Rapid Marketing Process Improvement (RMPI) services help you implement marketing best practices. Typical improvements that result from marketing process improvement projects are reduced costs, cycle time, and error rates from 5 to 15% in a 3-month time period. Without a rigorous process, as many new problems and inefficiencies can be introduced as are eliminated. Designing the new marketing processes involves the following steps:

1. A detailed analysis of the current marketing processes
   
   1. Evaluation of the effectiveness of information management and the value of data.
   2. Analysis of on-time completion and cycle time of key processes.
   3. Analysis of the efficiency of the current marketing processes.
   4. Identification of opportunities for standardization of equipment and work methods.
   5. Detection of duplicated or superfluous procedures and activities.
   6. Identification of the effectiveness and use of enablers such as documents and forms, computers, networks, e-mail, document management, etc.
   7. Analysis of the forms and documents that are being used.
   8. Evaluation of possible automation opportunities.
      
2. Our approach to designing new marketing processes consists of four activities:
   
   1. Determining the organizational starting point i.e. the information required to execute the marketing function.
   2. Specifying the application of information.
   3. Design of the logical structure.
   4. Design of the physical structure.

Our Methodology
There are a variety of approaches to marketing process improvement and marketing best practices. RMPI - Rapid Marketing Process Improvement - is based upon an approach originally developed by IBM Corporation and Ernst and Young.

The MarketingPilot RMPI approach focuses a group's attention on a single process during a 1-2 day meeting to define how the group can adopt best practices over the short term - 90 days or less. Before the end of the meeting, management approves or rejects the proposed best practices improvements. The RMPI approach has 8 phases:

1. A process is identified as a candidate for RMPI.
2. The executive responsible for the process agrees to support the process improvement initiative.
3. A team is assigned; a set of objectives is prepared and approved by the sponsor.
4. The RMPI team meets for 1-2 days to develop a before and after high-level process flowchart, and information that is required to complete the process. Actions that can be taken to improve the process' performance are identified.
5. A member of the team must agree to be responsible for implementing each best practices recommendation that is submitted to the sponsoring executive.
6. At the end of the RMPI session, the executive sponsor attends a meeting to review the findings of the team.
7. Before the end of the meeting the executive approves or rejects the best practices recommendations.
8. The approved best practices solutions are implemented by the team over the next 90 days.
9. A 90 day review is held to validate the success or failure of the process improvement.

We Address Organizational Change Management Issues
Process changes can be disruptive. RMPI addresses change management through the development of a fully integrated change management plan, which typically precedes the actual implementation of the process improvements.

Efficient Marketing Processes Usually Require a Marketing Information System
Again, the information requirements of the marketing organization form the basis for designing the marketing information system, not the other way around. Marketing information systems include:

• Information required for various functions at strategic, tactical and levels.
• Information quality in terms of relevance, reliability, and accuracy, and ease of use.
• Internal controls and procedures to generate reliable information.

The Role of Marketing Information Systems Technology in Marketing Process Improvement
Process changes driven by new systems can fail to deliver results. MarketingPilot's RMPI uses marketing information systems as a process enabler rather than a process driver. RMPI may or may not include a new marketing information system; the RMPI process approach drives organizations to define and improve their processes before applying marketing information systems to optimize the total performance of the organization's marketing processes. In our experience, using marketing information systems as an enabler rather than driver can yield significantly greater improvement. The IT department is an important support department, and is typically included in the RMPI process.

MarketingPilot's RMPI Tools
Typical projects involve 6 phases:

1. Organization: getting organized for process improvement.
2. Documentation: selecting a documentation approach.
3. Analysis: defining improvement opportunities.
4. Design: designing the best practices process.
5. Implementation: installing the best practices solution.
6. Management: managing the process organization for continuous improvement and continuous best practices.

We bring a broad set of tools to each project, including: