At Juniper Networks, we exist to solve the world’s most difficult problems in networking. Today, complexity is at the heart of those problems. Simple is our obsession. And yet, our marketing teams were challenged with the complexity of managing multiple marketing budgets maintained in multiple disparate spreadsheets across the globe.
This resulted in a lack of real-time visibility into our marketing investment performance, which made it difficult to identify activities that should be reallocated to better align with strategic imperatives.
Marketing budget management and reporting as top pain point
In addition, a key finding for the marketing organization from the 2011 employee survey identified that marketing budget management and reporting was a top business pain point.
By outlining our experience identifying and implementing a marketing performance management (MPM) point solution, I hope to share helpful insights into the process and key considerations to keep in mind for other marketers considering a similar change to their technology stack.
At Juniper Networks, we have a robust yet agile martech management process. Before attempting to solve the problem, we always start by documenting business requirements.
Business requirements for a marketing investment planning tool
For this assessment, requirements included, but were not limited to:
- Enable real-time visibility into global marketing investment plans with the ability to review details by team, campaign and attribute
- Create a seamless link between marketing investment planning and detailed budget management to include plans vs. actuals
- Enable planning and reporting for both OPEX and MDF in one application
- Identify a SaaS-based, easy to use, intuitive application that could be quickly implemented and easily adopted by marketers globally
- Simplify reporting and create meaningful insights for both marketers and our partners in finance
- Realize an increased return on marketing investments through increased visibility and collaboration
Technology landscape review, assessment
Our CMO challenged our Global Marketing Operations team to identify and recommend a single tool that could remedy budget management challenges and plan for the operational expenses and costs of developing the market.
After completing a technology landscape review, we consulted with SiriusDecisions, who highlighted the MPM point solution Allocadia.
After thoroughly assessing several potential solutions, we determined that Allocadia successfully addressed the efficiency, ease of use and functionality requirements with the added benefit of a short deployment timeframe.
Business outcomes of implementing Allocadia
By working closely with Allocadia’s Customer Success team, we were able to define requirements and fully implement the platform within sixty days.
Just five weeks after deployment, we were using Allocadia to manage over 170 OPEX and MDF budgets across more than 100 users distributed around the globe.
That was seven years ago.
Since implementing Allocadia, there is increased visibility and alignment of marketing investments to strategic initiatives, increased collaboration among the global teams in support of campaign planning and ongoing visibility to plans vs. actuals.
All of this has enabled marketing to close the quarter within 1% of target for the past 29 quarters.
Nancy Weintraub is VP of Marketing Demand, Analytics and Information at Juniper Networks