Interestingly, yesterday, I heard from five different companies about using BPM for marketing. So, I have spent the day (and will continue to spend time) flushing out the marketing processes and the value proposition associated with improving marketing processes and managing them using BPM.
For example:
* Reducing the cycle time of product development
* Easing version control of public relations
* Minimizing pricing errors
* Using data triggers to initiate processes (e.g., competitive intelligence initiates change to promotional materials)
Pricing struck me as a good one since yesterday my wife was looking at a golf club (Taylor Made R7 driver). At the store we buy from, it was $300. Online and in the paper at the store down the street, it was $190. Our golf pro called the Taylor Made rep and found out that the other store had jumped the gun. The discount wasn't supposed to begin until this weekend.
Now, both the store and Taylor Made are going to sacrifice several days of higher prices all because the pricing coordination didn't happen right. Coordination of releasing information across channels and partners is a big deal but something that a basic rules engine could manage.
I put together a high lever pricing process (see below) that I am going to work up into a demo. Overall, I am going to try to put together the story for automating the entire marketing value chain. I think it has a great story leveraging DFSS (Design for Six Sigma) and Stage-Gate and a few other best practices that are out there. More to come...
Comments