Acronyms are everywhere in the business world. I recently came across some new ones: MRM, CLM, and MOM. I thought, hold on, I’m a MOM but I don’t think I’m an MRM. Apparently, it has more than one meaning.

I’m a mom and I’m also a marketing professional. It wasn’t until recently that I learned that MOM also means Marketing Operations Management and that there is a wave of change taking hold in the marketing world called Marketing Resource Management. I found the following definition online in Wikipedia.org:

Marketing Operations Management (MOM) is a vision of end to end marketing optimization, from planning and budgeting, through marketing content management, to global marketing execution and analysis. It is characterized by an attempt to achieve measurable and trackable marketing via a marketing dashboard. The concept of the marketing dashboard is that a marketing executive, or indeed any employee of an organization, can log in to a system which shows the status of all ongoing marketing activities. The Marketing Resource Management(MRM) industry, including software vendors such as Aprimo and Assetlink, aims to assist organizations realize the goal of business-oriented, measurable marketing rather than the traditional reliance on ‘gut’ feelings in the marketing process.

At this point, MRM is only six years old and has primarily taken hold in the enterprise realm. Companies like HP, Intel, eBay, Cisco, and many others have or are in the process of implementing MRM solutions. These companies hire consultants, such as Marketing Transformation Services (MTS), to analyze and guide the rollout of an MRM solution. It’s big business stuff.

Our marketing department at Concentric is not large when compared to these organizations, but we struggle with similar issues that big corporations are addressing such as, developing marketing strategy, measuring marketing expenditure, or tracking a multitude of marketing activities, with a centralized view for all.

I attended a conference organized by MTS and eBay to hear from other organizations on how they are utilizing MRM solutions to ensure best marketing practices. As experts in this space, MTS stated that undertaking an MRM implementation starts with defining the problem that needs solving within the marketing business, such as cost reduction or productivity gains. Companies jumping on the MRM bandwagon often fall short of their goal when they haven’t taken the time up front to identify the problem to be solved. Another best practice is focused on the people in the organization and the need to communicate relentlessly as well as include people at all levels to create a culture of excitement around the solution that requires change, yet brings big benefits (also known as the cultural transformation plan.) With people and process lined up, implementing technology on the backend becomes the icing on the cake.

I realized that I was sort of like a younger sibling learning from a big brother. Wouldn’t Mom be proud? As we grow bigger, it pays to be cognizant of these issues and the options available to address them before they spiral out of control, possibly with an MRM type solution. Whether you’re a big or small business, all business requires marketing to grow and the problems faced by businesses of all sizes are similar in this realm. It’s interesting to learn about big business solutions and to factor their experience into managing your own marketing.

As hosted applications become more prevalent, MRM solutions for small and mid size companies will become more accessible, similar to what’s happened in the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Sales Force Automation (SFA) fields. It will be more affordable to buy the technology on a per-user or month-to-month basis. The people and process side can then be addressed no matter how big or small your business.

Nicole Sommerfeld
Snr Manager, Marketing, Concentric