BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN MARKETING AND FINANCE

The bigger the team, the larger the challenges. Many CMO’s confess to having operational challenges. This is especially true for campaigns that require resources from other teams. Many projects take too long to complete, require too many hours, some tasks are performed by several people whilst other tasks are left undone. All in all, it affects output and the team's internal reputation.

Most large companies have evolved passed the matrix-organization. They are now 3 or 4 dimensional with countries, business units, product areas and role hierarchies. This makes it extremely difficult to manage cross-corporate functions such as marketing.

Many enterprises are unable to leverage their digital platforms. Despite having a highly complex marketing execution they lack the ability to connect all the data. CRM data, marketing performance data and financial data have to be manually connected.

Marketing directors and financial controllers have to spend too much time chasing information. Tracking marketing spend across specific customer groups, products and business units, and understanding the ROI of these activities, is often near impossible.

Most enterprises have complex financial structures. Marketing campaigns are often funded from several cost centers, and require budget and content approval from several sources. Mapping marketing activities to product groups, cost centers and customer groups is extremely time consuming and often results in inadequate marketing reports.