The CMO's Strategic Agenda Benchmark Report

The CMO's Strategic Agenda
Benchmark Report








January 2006




The CMO's Strategic Agenda Benchmark Report
Executive Summary
Marketing executives face a constant stream of pressures-pressure to accommodate cus-tomers, business pressure from executives to meet corporate goals, and pressure for vir-tuosity in performing key marketing functions. Customer expectations are increasing and satisfaction is becoming increasingly difficult to reign in as customers today have more and more choices, and more channels through which to purchase. In addition, there is increasing uncertainty stemming from converging sales, marketing, and distribution channels. These pressures to find the smoothest path to the bottom line, and utilize the technologies that best integrate all the customer data collected at each point and channel of customer interaction, are omnipresent. Best-in-class companies enjoy a performance advantage over their peers in understanding not only who their customers are, but what type of relationship their customers want with them (Figure i).
Figure i: Best-in-Class Companies Enjoy a Performance Advantage
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00%% 2200%% 4400%% 6600%% 8800%% 110000%%BBIICC %% ooff rreessppoonnddeennttss sshhoowwiinngg ggrreeaatteerr IInndduussttrryy NNoorrmm tthhaann 1155%% iimmpprroovveemmeennttLLaaggggaarrdd Source: AberdeenGroup, September 2005 Aberdeen believes product commoditization, higher customer expectations, and growing global competition, along with multiple sales, marketing, and distribution channels, have pressured marketers into developing a dynamic, flexible customer-responsive, market-ing-ready infrastructure, and to answer tough questions to ensure their personal suc-cess: . How do I plan and budget to win customer purchasing dollars? . How do I decide on the optimal mix of products, services, price points, or pro-motions? All print and electronic rights are the property of AberdeenGroup © 2005. AberdeenGroup . i The CMO's Strategic Agenda Benchmark Report
. How do I demonstrate the value marketing programs are having on other met-rics? . How do I gather, integrate, and apply the collected data? . How do I ensure our team continually improves? . How do I show the impact of our efforts?
Key Business Value Findings Aberdeen benchmarked 589 companies to gain insight into the "marketing-ready" enter-prise. Our research demonstrated that marketing-ready companies successfully bring to-gether a closed-loop approach using the right metrics, differentiating capabilities, and more integrated and sophisticated technologies. This research revealed that best-in-class marketers consistently demonstrate higher per-formance across KEY business and marketing metrics, they also measure specific metrics that directly link marketing efforts and overall business goals. Further examination of these top performers reveals core marketing capabilities, such as customer profitability modeling, centralized knowledge and data management, and tracking customer behavior, that effectively enhance marketing performance and enable marketers to better respond to current customer pressures. Technologies that will yield best-in-class results must enable integration of data and en-hance sophistication of marketing processes in order to add value. Aberdeen finds that companies adopting these practices position their company to be market-ready. For CMOs, market-readiness should mean that the marketing function is poised to meet the four core marketing competencies (Figure ii).
Figure ii: Core Marketing Competencies

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