Powerful tech solutions promise to revolutionise marketing departments but can all too often end up feeling like more trouble than they’re worth. Suzy Bashford asks: what is B2B’s problem with tech?
Imagine you’re about to install a piece of marketing automation (MA) software that promises to streamline the communications across your entire business. The tech wizardry sounds amazing and the vendor has said it’s only going to cost you £30,000, but is projected to drive around £300,000 in efficiencies. A no-brainer, right?
Fast-forward to half way through implementation, and you’ve already gone over budget. That excited feeling in your belly you had at the start of the project has rapidly morphed into frustration, disappointment and resentment.
This is exactly the situation Craig Le Grice, founder and CEO of tech innovation consultancy Hub and Lab, had with one of his clients two years ago. So, what went wrong?
Lack of planning and people
Like so many tech problems, the blame cannot be levelled at one culprit; the situation was brought about by an accumulation of poor decisions. Firstly, the client didn’t invest properly in strategic planning upfront, crucially neglecting to consider the impact of legacy systems, integration and education for the whole team, not just IT or marketing, about the changes the new tech would bring.
Secondly, the 130-strong company only had two IT specialists inhouse. And, these people were IT managers, used to fixing systems and giving helpdesk advice, rather than innovation strategists. As Le Grice explains: “They hadn’t been able to plot out an integration map properly saying, for instance, ‘in week four of installing this software to the company, we need to do X, Y and Z’. Also, because they weren’t part of the leadership team – they were just commissioned by the board – they didn’t have a clue about the knock-on effects or impact on roles across the business.”
At that mid-way point, Le Grice and his team swooped in to save the day: “Immediately, we pulled in a strategist. She cost a few hundred pounds a day as a freelancer and worked with the client for a few months, integrating every part of the process. She built a comms plan to make sure everyone in the business knew what to integrate, and when. She took everyone on a journey with the leadership team by mapping, with a Gantt chart, all the important parts, with advanced warning of anything that could be particularly tricky.”
The cost saving of good planning was huge: after this point in the project, the client didn’t spend more than five per cent of what had already been spent.
Problems are the norm
Unfortunately, this type of example is not an exception. In fact, it’s generally the ‘rule’ that these types of problems are encountered when implementing new MA technology. In Le Grice’s experience, nine cases out of 10 haven’t thought through their strategy adequately. Part of the issue here is that many marketers buying technology are both overwhelmed and led by vendors touting all-singing, all-dancing MA. Clearly, it is not in a vendor’s interest to point out all the obstacles you may encounter later on, before you have signed on the dotted line.
However, says Le Grice, we’re now seeing a fundamental shift in how decisions about technology are made. There is much more acknowledgement today that technology has the potential to disrupt any business or sector and, to be on top of their game, CEOs need to understand IT; no longer can fundamental decisions like the commissioning of new technology be left to one or two departments, like IT or marketing.
Nevertheless, while there’s this acknowledgement, there often aren’t enough informed decision-makers on the board, throughout the company or even across the entire industry. Hence, the rapid growth in outsourcing talent and the desperation of headhunters to get their hands on professionals with both IT and marketing expertise.
These highly sought-after individuals often straddle the two departments and, according to CEO of MA firm Donky, Paul Putman, are commonly called ‘marketing technologists’. “It’s difficult to find this person,” he adds: “You have a choice. You either choose someone from a technology background who understands marketing, or a marketer who understands technology. We would usually suggest more of a technologist and coach them into a full marketing role. Why? They have a crucial core skill set and they understand how these technologies work. That process is ingrained in their brains.”
Grasp the nettle
But if you’re reading this thinking, ‘Well, I’m a marketer, I’m not a technologist, so I’ll leave all that to those marketing technologists’ then you need to think again. For a start, a good understanding of technology and an appetite to learn about it is fast becoming a prerequisite to be a successful marketer. This is true as much in the B2B sector as in the B2C. Secondly, the attitude – ‘I’ll leave that technology stuff up to them, in the other department’ – is one of the main reasons so many problems arise when marketing is automated in the first place.
As Putman argues, the only way to fully “harness the power of this new wave of technology” is to integrate it across the entire business, so every department is tapped into it and contributing insights which trigger better communications with the target audience. This clearly makes implementation more challenging, as different departments from marketing to sales to customer service, have different priorities.
“I’ve been through this process plenty of times and unless you’ve got a senior executive decision-maker who owns the programme and has the ability to influence and motivate other parts of the business outside marketing, it won’t work,” he says.
This board member has to galvanise the workforce around the new tech, get them excited and break down silos so different departments collaborate more effectively to get the best out of the programme. “Uniting disparate siloes is necessary and can effectively remove the power struggles between departments, by providing a clear direction from the top,” adds Putman.
People are the key
So, as you’ll quickly be realising, the B2B technology problem usually isn’t about technology at all. It’s actually about people and relationships. And ranking at the top of the table of the most important relationships are those between technologists (‘the IT crowd’) and marketers.
As Jaydeep Korde, client principal at global IT consultancy ThoughtWorks, says: “Whatever stage a business is at in terms of its maturity, if you have marketing and IT working together well, that collaboration can raise your level, whatever level that may be. Wonderful things can happen with a ‘shared exploration’ approach, rather than saying ‘IT said this and marketing wants this’.”
Instead of this transactional relationship, successful marketers need to cultivate an ongoing, mutually beneficial dialogue with IT specialists. However, what most commonly happens, according to Korde, is that a marketer will find someone working in IT that ‘they like and isn’t totally terrifying’ and will always consult that person.
He continues: “But for the scale of what digital marketing does today, that isn’t enough. People and teams need to work much, much better together. Their skill sets need to align. Just as marketers need to be aware of the ever-changing tech landscape, IT professionals need to understand how brands are created and the nuances of branding. Technologists must realise it’s less and less about ‘keeping the lights on’ in the IT system and more about helping marketers get a return on investment.”
Those marketers who are embracing technology and willing to learn are finding themselves, says Korde, “empowered”. He’s noticed that as they become more skilled and knowledgeable, they are more confident talking to IT professionals about exploring further how the tech solution could work better for them, or discussing the tools’ limitations, without losing the plot in frustration.
#FOMO
Vera Loftis, MD UK of global IT consultancy Bluewolf, agrees – particularly that success in this sphere ultimately comes down to people – but believes there is a particular mindset that undermines a marketer’s confidence too: FOMO. For those who who aren’t down with the kids, that means the ‘fear of missing out’.
“There is such a push right now to automate marketing. Marketers feel compelled,” she says. “They see competitors doing it and they think ‘if I don’t do it, I’m behind’. This pushes them into a tech solution and they buy these big, fancy technologies, plug them in and expect them to do everything from bringing in revenue to making coffee. So there’s a lot of frustration with the reality. This happens in the MA market probably more than any other market.”
Her advice goes back to what Le Grice was saying at the beginning of this piece about the importance of pausing to make a plan before jumping into a purchase. But she goes further on the people front. As a crucial part of preparation, she advocates herding all the key stakeholders into a room (but preferably no more than about 15) and “forcing conversations” because: “This is the piece that people miss out on when it comes to technology”.
When she facilitates these meetings, they’re generally held around a whiteboard where a group thrashes out the process and discusses the day-to-day reality of how the new technology will impact each role. This way, each function begins to understand why certain behaviour change is necessary and increases the likelihood of buy-in.
“Successful companies develop a culture of inquisitiveness. They want to understand and ask questions. They also want feedback, as it breeds useful conversations to improve their role in the team. In this environment, people feel comfortable asking questions. There is a general misconception that technology can just be plugged in and instantly work, but a lot of pure people management is required to re-craft processes.”
An initial meeting of this kind can bypass many problems that would otherwise happen further down the line. As a highly beneficial by-product, the face-to-face interaction will break down siloes much more effectively than any technology ever could.
But beware. No matter how well you prepare, don’t be fooled into thinking that this piece of technology you’re buying is some kind of magic answer to business integration and silo breakdown; a dream that Loftis often suspects clients harbour.
These tools are highly complex, hugely impressive, powerful machines capable of mind-blowing customer-centric calculations from aggregating the data you give them. They deserve respect and patience. Not the proverbial ‘computer kick’ we laugh at so often on videos of angry office workers. Like most things worth learning in life, mastering them will take blood, sweat and – most probably – a few tears to boot.