INNOVATION
Process Improvement And Performance Management For Successful Marketing
By Dr . Kellen Kiambati
All organizations whether commercial or non-commercial inevitably have an inner wish to remain in operations and be sustainable so as to meet the needs of their shareholders , customers , potential investors , regulators and employees . This causes a need to examine their operations in order to continuously improve . To do this , business leaders interact scope and risk versus gains and mindset change across the entire reengineering spectrum from process improvement , process re-engineering , business re-engineering , transformation to on-going renewal . As this is happening , knowledge transfer takes place in three principal areas ; explicit knowledge , tacit knowledge , and potential knowledge .
The mission and strategy of any organization are important elements in providing clear declaration of intent and provides a clear communication to staff preventing confusion and ambiguity . Depending with the organization structure , some of the management processes take place across functional hierarchy . All organizations are made up of unique technical employees whose roles interact and as such special design of those roles and how they plug into marketing function is key . It is important to re-emphasize that collaboration across departments is essentially the development of new , innovative and more cooperative working relationships to increase performance .
Being business focused means that one is clear about what the organization ’ s strategic priorities are and uses those priorities to guide decisions about what to focus on . It is not enough for marketing managers to do something because a client requests it or because there is a performance gap . At one given point , all managers have something somewhere broken , and repairing a broken process does not automatically mean improving performance , it all begins with all managers including marketing managers undertaking serious business analysis to be business focused .
Successful process improvement and performance management effort has measureable financial returns and knowledge transfer . These attributes are drawn from a meticulous process of identifying key strategic marketing activities , development of cost for each activity , activity process flow maps , quantification of non-value added activities , identification of marketing and performance metrics and prioritized list of process improvement opportunities . A good front-to-end analysis leads to clear business objectives and key performance measurable outcomes .
At times , however , the business objectives may be hard to measure for example branding awareness , customer goodwill , enterprise resilience and intellectual capacity . Such targets may sound somewhat soft or hard to quantify . If they cannot be measured directly , it is important for marketing managers to identify indicators for them that are associated with an outcome or result of interest .
Marketing performance management systems often tend to confuse rather than enlighten managers because sometimes the process is so complex to provide the insight necessary to effect change hence becoming irrelevant . There are techniques to help marketers overcome this irrelevance and one of them is balanced scorecard . To ensure marketers who choose to use balanced scorecards create value they should start with a clear end point to be achieved , identify key customers and their exact wants from performance management , then ensure quick wins are produced . Quick wins ensure marketing managers capture progress , management , and areas of improvement before it gets too far down the road .
All process improvement and marketing performance management efforts should be anchored on the philosophy of controlling activities to effectively meet customer needs , continuous improvement for competitive advantage , management of cost oriented marketing activities , improvement of quality products and services , effective management of marketing staff and empowering them to change the way they work . Benchmarking with best marketing experts is also encouraged and can follow these steps : Definition of process to be benchmarked , identification of potential benchmarking partners , mapping of potential benefits , conducting the visit , picking of key learning points and trial implementation improvements .
To analyze and solve all process improvement and marketing performance management , many people think of technology . While technology may provide the best solutions at times , there are a few principles to be applied by marketing managers seeking to improve processes and performance including : Thorough understanding of the process ; Simplifying complex processes ; Automation of process using a clear process flow chat ; and Integrating the process .
In conclusion , all marketing managers should remember the simple process and performance improvement rule to never start without some level of executive support and buy-in . Any meaningful level of support is enough to get started to ensure relatively quick results while providing the level of sophistication required to make appropriate decisions .
Kellen Kiambati holds an MBA in Strategic Management from the Kenya Methodist University and a PhD in Business Administration with a focus in Strategic Management from JKUAT . She is a member of the Institute of Human Resource Management of Kenya . She can be reached via : Kellenkiambati @ gmail . com .
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