Research

Publication Date: 27 April 2006

ID Number: G00139459

Strategic Options for Establishing an Enterprise

Marketing Management Platform
Kimberly Collins

Enterprise marketing management can provide a platform for marketing operations and
processes. As vendors develop stronger capabilities to support EMM, companies will
need to assess different options for establishing a platform for marketing.

2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form
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WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

No vendor offers a complete platform for enterprise marketing management. Companies can
build EMM from a standard set of IT technologies; buy from an enterprise, CRM or marketing
suite vendor; or assemble from best-of-breed applications. Companies must make trade-offs in
functionality, architecture, usability and viability. Leverage prior investments where possible,
keeping in mind that the fundamental value proposition for EMM resides in robust functionality
that meets the needs of roles within marketing, as well as in the architecture, to support seamless
marketing processes across those roles.

STRATEGIC PLANNING ASSUMPTION(S)

By 2008, only two or three vendors will offer a seamless marketing suite of interoperable, flexible,
component-based applications to support global marketing processes (0.8 probability).

ANALYSIS
Enterprise marketing management (EMM) encompasses the business strategy, process
automation and technologies required to effectively operate a marketing department, align
resources, execute customer-centric strategies and improve marketing performance (see "EMM
Can Be an Effective Platform for Planning and Execution"). This includes functionality for
campaign management, lead management, marketing resource management (MRM) and
analytics. EMM also emphasizes the architecture and platform for role-based distribution of
information, content and functionality.
EMM solutions are made up of a variety of technologies and tools, such as business process
management (BPM), workflow, project management, corporate performance management
(CPM), business intelligence (BI), digital asset management (DAM), enterprise content
management (ECM), portals and service-oriented architecture. EMM solutions bring these
technologies together in one solution to support different marketing users, roles, functions,
marketing processes and the day-to-day activities that make up those processes. Marketing
automation and enterprise suite vendors are developing EMM platforms. By 2008, only two or
three vendors will offer a seamless marketing suite of interoperable, flexible, component-based
applications to support global marketing processes (0.8 probability).
Companies implementing an EMM platform to support all of marketing have several options (see
Figure 1).

Publication Date: 27 April 2006/ID Number: G00139459

2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 2 of 7

Figure 1. Strategic Options for Establishing an EMM Platform

Breadth of Focus

Buy
Application
Suite

Marketing

Enterprise

Select a
marketing
application suite

Select an
enterprise
application suite

Buy or consolidate a
variety of best-ofbreed marketing
applications and
assemble

Build from a set of

standard enterprise
applications and
technologies

IT Approach

Assemble
Technologies and
Applications

Source: Gartner (April 2006)

Build From a Set of Standard Enterprise Applications and Technologies

Some companies have or are in the process of standardizing on core technologies across the
enterprise (for example, BI, BPM, DAM, ECM, workflow and project management) in an attempt
to remove "silos" across the organization. However, this strategy creates another set of silos for
marketing users who will have to leverage a disjointed set of eight to 10 "standard" technology
applications to support their day-to-day tasks and activities. One option is to build an EMM
solution from this set of standard technologies, and use the enterprise portal as the common
interface that brings these capabilities together and is customized to meet the needs of marketing
users. Few companies have attempted to build an EMM solution in this manner, and only a small
percentage have been successful. Most companies end up re-evaluating prepackaged solutions
six to 12 months later or report problems with user acceptance. Those that manage to build an
application that marketing workers will use end up with a highly customized application that is
proprietary and lacks scalability (for example, when it is time to implement it in other geographical
regions or to meet new requirements because of merger and acquisition activity) and the ability to
be integrated to other applications. An interesting paradox is that these proprietary solutions often
become siloed solutions within marketing despite the original premise to standardize on these
technologies to reduce silos.
Strengths: IT organizations are familiar with the technologies, tools and vendors, and can provide
high levels of support. Integrated capabilities with key areas, such as CPM, can be jointly
developed to make the integration more seamless (for example, budgets roll up from marketing to
finance in a planned manner). Applications can be developed that support specific or unique
marketing processes that are not well-supported in other EMM solutions.
Weaknesses: This option can be limited in terms of its overall ability to be integrated and scaled.
Potential lack of usability exists for marketing users who will resist using the applications.
Customization costs often outweigh perceived cost savings of standardizing on a set of

Publication Date: 27 April 2006/ID Number: G00139459

2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 3 of 7

established technologies and vendors. Expect long development and implementation time frames
(18 months to two years).
Action: Only consider this option if your IT organization and business units have had a good
experience working together to develop solutions based on these technologies to meet business
user requirements. Consider this approach if you have highly specialized requirements for
marketing that are not found in current EMM solutions, but only after considering vendors'
prepackaged solutions.
Select an Enterprise Application Suite
Enterprise application suite vendors, such as Oracle and SAP, have expanded from a focus on
platform, database and core technologies (for example, project management, DAM, ECM and BI).
Increasingly, they have moved into prepackaged business application markets, such as CRM,
including marketing applications. Their value proposition is to provide the benefits of standardized
architecture for IT, as well as prepacked applications for business users. Although these vendors
are continuing to evolve their prepackaged capabilities and improve the usability and flexibility of
their marketing applications (through in-house development or acquisitions, such as Oracle or
Siebel), they (like those clients who choose to build) rely on core technologies to build these
applications, making it more of a solution built for IT users than business users.
Most companies report better usability and overall marketing capabilities than those that
attempted to build applications from a variety of standard vendor tools. However, this is still an
area of concern for users and it is not uncommon to find that customization is necessary to
complete requirements for marketing business users and certain marketing processes. Gartner
sees clients in particular industries considering or selecting the standard vendor with little to no
consideration of other options, such as consumer goods and manufacturing clients, who prefer a
relationship with one vendor and a common application architecture for CRM, ERP and supply
chain management (SCM). Sometimes, the decision is made in the IT organization with licenses
bought without input from marketing. Some of these companies have had to re-evaluate other
options and select another vendor when marketing's requirements are realized.
Strengths: This option offers a standard set of technologies and application architecture that
potentially supports more-seamless integration between marketing and other business functions.
It has strong vendor viability.
Weaknesses: This option has limited flexibility because of customization. Lack of usability may
limit user adoption. Less functionality exists than with marketing automation vendors. Workflow
tools are limited to IT users, not highly configurable by a business user and do not support
IT/business collaboration. Plan for longer implementation times (12 to 18 months) if customization
is required.
Action: Consider enterprise suite vendors if you have an IT relationship with these vendors and a
preference to consider their capabilities as part of a broader enterprise application architecture
platform for all business applications. The IT organization should include the marketing
department in the selection process and not purchase a solution without its input.
Select a Marketing Application Suite
The following vendors have developed a suite of marketing applications that is more from the
business user's perspective and can support EMM:

Marketing automation vendors, such as Aprimo and Unica

Analytic providers, such as SAS Institute and Teradata

Publication Date: 27 April 2006/ID Number: G00139459

2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 4 of 7

CRM suite vendors, such as Chordiant Software, Siebel Systems (acquired by Oracle)
and SSA Global (Epiphany)

These vendors may not have the most technical capabilities integrated with their marketing
applications (for example, BI, DAM or BPM), but they have solutions that meet marketing user
requirements in those areas. They may also leverage third-party vendors to build some of their
capabilities (for example, BI for reporting and marketing performance management). The breadth
and depth of application functionality varies across these vendors; however, overall, this set of
vendors tends to have the broadest set of marketing functionality to support EMM. These vendors
typically get high marks from references for usability, functional capabilities and flexibility. The
vision and focus for many of these vendors is to build an EMM platform, enabling them to provide
reusable application components as services, highly configurable role-based interfaces and an
analytical foundation for marketing performance management. These are the vendors that most
companies with heterogeneous IT environments typically shortlist for marketing automation.
However, most marketing purchases to date have been made based on tactical decisions (for
example, campaign management and MRM) rather than selection of these vendors as an EMM
platform. Companies looking to marketing automation for the first time are beginning to consider a
broader set of marketing functionality that extends across standard application areas.
Strengths: This option provides breadth of marketing functionality that supports a growing set of
marketing roles, functions and users. It offers users depth in certain areas, such as campaign
management, MRM and real-time analytics. It provides usability by marketing users.
Implementation cycles are faster (six to nine months). This option offers greater viability
compared to point or best-of-breed solutions.
Weaknesses: Process integration to applications in other business areas outside of marketing
and CRM, such as ERP, procurement, SCM and CPM, may be limited. Data integration is limited
to the capabilities and level of data support for each system. Companies are typically smaller and
considered less viable than the large enterprise suite vendors.
Action: Consider these vendors as good candidates for EMM with a strong focus on marketing
user requirements. However, these vendors do not have the same breadth and depth of
functionality across marketing. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses in different functional
areas. Assess each vendor's long-term vision for EMM, including role-based functionality,
configurable application functionality based on services and the analytical foundation for
marketing performance management. Specialty vendors may be required to fill in functionality
gaps.
Buy or Consolidate a Variety of Best-of-Breed Marketing Applications and Assemble
Other vendors in this space provide niche or "specialty" capabilities in particular areas of
marketing automation, such as MRM (for example, Assetlink, BrandWizard Technologies and
Elateral), campaign management (for example, SmartFocus, Click Tactics and Million
Handshakes) or analytics (for example, SPSS, Marketing Management Analytics and Intelligent
Results). Vendors in other categories, especially marketing suites, often have best-of-breed
capabilities or depth in particular areas, such as campaign management (Unica), MRM (Aprimo),
real-time marketing (SSA Global) or analytics (SAS Institute and Siebel).
Most Type A (leading-edge) companies prefer to invest in best-of-breed technologies to meet
their requirements and provide them with competitive differentiation. Many have already made
significant investments in marketing solutions from different vendors. One option for these
companies is to consolidate solutions (for example, reduce the number of campaign management
applications to one) and then integrate with other marketing applications (for example, MRM and
analytics) to create an EMM platform. We see a few large, global Type A companies beginning to
consider such a path to EMM. Although it may give the company the broadest and deepest set of
Publication Date: 27 April 2006/ID Number: G00139459
2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

Page 5 of 7

marketing functionality, the challenge will be to provide an integrated architecture and platform for
seamless role-based access, reusable functionality and cross-marketing performance
management. Viability of some of the smaller vendors can also be a factor in the long-term
maintenance of the solution. Some vendors may develop ecosystems with preintegrated solutions
(for example, the global MRM solutions of EMC, Adobe, Assetlink, Document Sciences and SDL).
Strengths: This option provides the broadest and deepest set of functionality for competitive
advantage. It offers high tactical usability for specific sets of users around each solution and
leverages current investments and tools, which saves money for training on new applications.
Implementation time in tactical areas is short (three to six months).
Weaknesses: Potentially, common architectures and platforms that support the reuse of common
functionality and measurement of marketing activities are lacking. Long-term implementation of
common platforms could take nine to 18 months. Integration will be less seamless, increase the
expense of the solution, and make it more difficult to maintain and perform upgrades. Upgrades
for different vendor solutions will not come at consistent times, adding to maintenance issues.
This option lacks a common user interface for different marketing users. Viability of smaller
vendors with point solutions can be critical if one of the vendors goes out of business.
Action: Consider this approach if you have already made significant investments in marketing
solutions from vendors considered best of breed in their respective areas. Evaluate the fit of the
applications based on architecture (for example, Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition vs. .NET),
content management, database and analytical tools, including vendor partnerships and
ecosystems. Select a primary vendor to become the platform and integrate the other solutions
onto that platform. The primary vendor should be chosen based on its fit with your long-term
vision for EMM. Plan to replace certain third-party components of the solution with solutions from
the primary vendor as return on investment is achieved with the old solution and the primary
vendor provides capabilities that meet requirements in that area.

Publication Date: 27 April 2006/ID Number: G00139459

2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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Publication Date: 27 April 2006/ID Number: G00139459

2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

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