How agile marketing fueled customer focus
+44%
The team identified productivity savings of 44% by moving to efficient agile processes and modern ways of working.
+11%
The speed-to-value methodology immediately freed up 11% of capacity, with 33% more unlocked through sprint and capacity planning.
-62%
The marketing team reduced the calendar time required to develop a campaign by 62%.
At a glance
Client
Global technology conglomerate
Industry
Technology
Our role
Improve marketing responsiveness
Our solution
Customer-centric agility
Responsive marketing that maps to customer journeys
Scenario
A Fortune 100 technology firm needed to be quicker and more responsive in the marketing it brought to market.
Approach
Grant Thornton developed and implemented a long-term transition plan, supported by a move to customer-focused efficiency.
Result
The comprehensive marketing program shift reduced timelines, freed up capacity and enabled customer journey mapping.
Scenario
Marketing needed to respond
A Fortune 100 global technology firm wanted to improve the returns for its Go to Market motions, marketing assets and content. “They just did not see enough sales impact from their marketing organization,” said Grant Thornton Growth Advisory Managing Director Sam Salha. “There was a view from leaders at the highest level that they were falling behind their competitors.”
The company’s leaders wanted marketing to adopt a more customer-centric approach to what it produced, implementing agile processes that could quickly adapt in response to changing needs. As more firms shift to service-based sales models, customer centricity has become a main driver for their marketing frameworks. “Meeting customers where they are is essential, because renewals are more important than actual annual sales,” Salha said.
This marketing transformation would require a comprehensive shift in the organization’s culture, with adoption of new capabilities and new technology for scalability — and it would affect everything in the marketing global demand center, from campaign strategies through to marketing operations. The challenge was greater than the company initially expected.
“They decided to move to a new agile model, but they didn't know how to do that,” Salha said. “They launched it, and it failed within two weeks. That’s when they brought us in.”
Approach
Personalization and efficiency
Driving change in a global demand center is a complex challenge. “When we think about marketing top-of-funnel activity, global demand centers orchestrate, strategize and prioritize internal resources and external content to deliver differentiated customer experiences,” said Grant Thornton Growth Advisory Managing Director Mark Owens. As the Grant Thornton team improved and streamlined processes, it had to manage these complexities.
“One of the biggest challenges on this project was getting their staff on board,” Salha said. “With a couple of hundred people who've been doing the same thing the same way for years, it was a big lift to get their mindsets to change.” The Grant Thornton team needed to take a collaborative and personal approach. “Based on our past experience, we knew there would be a personalization aspect,” Owens said.
To help drive the culture shift and model agile methodologies, the team focused on “learn by doing” and “learn along the way” approaches — leading the company’s marketers to develop initial insights, prioritize campaigns for pilots, design each campaign strategy and then execute each campaign.
Advisors from Grant Thornton Technology Enablement helped the company’s staff understand and apply agile frameworks, certifying them on the agile methodology mindset. Grant Thornton Growth Advisory professionals tailored a framework for this project, designing future state end-to-end agile processes and managing the full-lifecycle project, communications and teams. Grant Thornton also supplemented the customer strategists, marketing tech development and marketing tech enablement roles in the agile working pod, to ensure the company met its business goals while staff members learned new processes.
“Everything starts with the customer research that you build journeys upon. The journeys highlight moments that matter — what it takes to move customers from one stage to another.”
The new processes were both agile and customer-centric. The company already had a customer journey framework, but was not updating and using it effectively. “Everything starts with the customer research that you build journeys upon,” Salha said. “The journeys highlight moments that matter — what it takes to move customers from one stage to another. That informs a semi-annual development plan, with priorities for what content needs to be retired, renewed or refreshed.” From there, a quarterly prioritization effort aligns to the existing budget. Agile sprints execute the asset development within a specific time frame.
When the transformation was complete, the company had agile processes that were streamlined and ready to respond to customer journeys. The customer focus guided comprehensive three-year roadmaps that enable long-term planning for campaigns, organizational capacity and marketing technology solutions. “The key for their customer journeys was that it was a blended approach,” Owens said. “We took information from the client, based on their current state and how they look at their customer journey, and we layered in our specialized expertise from executing projects like this.”
Result
Customer-focused agility
The Grant Thornton team helped the marketing organization build responsive speed for customer-focused initiatives. The team designed agile processes that shortened the marketing campaign development timeline from 16 weeks down to only six. This improved efficiency freed up 11% of the marketing organization’s capacity right away, with another 33% freed up over time.
“We rounded out their customer journey, so they are now able to prioritize the content based on what is meaningful for their customers at specific moments in time.”
The new agile marketing processes, informed by customer understanding, have made the marketing organization more responsive. “We rounded out their customer journey, so they are now able to prioritize the content based on what is meaningful for their customers at specific moments in time,” Owens said. Previously, marketing priorities were defined by internal discussions. “Now, content gets prioritized based on a customer journey strategy, and research into what it takes to move customers from one stage to another — all the way through sales, adoption and renewal,” Salha said.
Each quarter, the organization orchestrates how its marketing content will be developed and served to customers, adapting the capacity required for various tactics, strategies and production. Salha noted, “One of the other big wins was that they can use capacity planning to map the expected execution of a task to a specific individual, and even map it over a number of sprints. In the past, they hadn’t measured the capacity of individuals on the team.”
Salha said that the Grant Thornton team’s tailored approach to full-lifecycle success helped ensure the project achieved its goals. “Everyone in our ecosystem brings personalization to client relationships. We know that’s important, because the success rate for this type of implementation is usually very small at other organizations.”
The Grant Thornton team invested in the company’s goals, and in the staff who would help achieve them. Salha explained, “Often, teams will produce a report, give it to a company and leave the rest to them. We invest in getting to know people, and up-leveling their skills, to make sure they can deliver against the recommendations.”
Related Resources
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This Grant Thornton Advisors LLC content provides information and comments on current issues and developments. It is not a comprehensive analysis of the subject matter covered. It is not, and should not be construed as, accounting, legal, tax, or professional advice provided by Grant Thornton Advisors LLC. All relevant facts and circumstances, including the pertinent authoritative literature, need to be considered to arrive at conclusions that comply with matters addressed in this content.
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