Marketing Governance

In today’s data-driven environment it’s important not to confuse analytics with acumen. Analytics may help facilitate or enhance business acumen or astuteness, but it certainly doesn’t replace it. The Oxford English Dictionary defines acumen as the ability to make good judgments and quick decisions.”

Analytics, on the other hand, is logical analysis derived by applying some type of algorithms or mathematics to data. In 2007, Davenport and Harris described analytics as a set of technologies and processes that use information and data to understand and analyze business performance. Certainly well-thought out logical analysis can be very useful in understanding and addressing business situations and making quick decisions that will produce a desired outcome. But there’s more to business acumen than logical analysis. A McKinsey article I once read framed this well, good analysis in the hands of managers who have good judgment won’t naturally yield good decisions.

Research by the Perth Leadership Institute, the Conference Executive Board (CEB) and others offer a variety of recommendations for how we can improve our business acumen. One of the key competencies cited is strong, quantitative skills. Why? Because being able to see the big picture requires an understanding of your market and how your organization operates in that market, and what drives profitability and cash flow for your organization. This is where analytics come into play. Read More

Big data, smart data, little data. Data is everywhere; it powers our daily lives. As consumer media consumption continues to shift digitally, marketers are faced with a new set of challenges in reaching their audiences with the right message, at the right time, and through the right channels. Marketers ability to collect and analyze data big, small, social and otherwise is needed to help create great customer experiences. This discussion will take a look at the ways marketing is adapting across people, platforms, processes, screens, and channels because of this surge of available data.

Pieter Casneuf, the CEO of ADAM Software, gave the keynote presentations at ADAM’s recent Sync! events held in Ghent and New York City. You can view a recording of Pieter’s presentation at the New York City event here.

In these presentations, Pieter reviewed the evolution of ADAM’s software solutions and announced the upcoming availability of ADAM’s cross-channel campaign management application. Pieter’s presentations dealt specifically with ADAM’s products, but they also generally describe how the DAM market space has evolved over the past decade.

Early digital asset management systems were what might be called “premium file systems.” They provided capabilities that focused on the organization, storage, and retrieval of digital content assets. They typically enabled organizations to use metadata to describe assets, provided relatively robust search functionality, and enabled version tracking and control.

In the first decade of this century, these early DAM systems evolved along three basic dimensions. The evolution didn’t follow a strict chronological order, and of course, not all DAM software providers followed the same path.

One evolutionary development was the addition of business process management capabilities to DAM systems. In fact, ADAM was an industry leader in proving these capabilities. Process management capabilities enable organizations to use their DAM software to manage and/or automate the processes and workflows that are involved in the creation, review, and approval of digital content assets. Read More