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Action Points
I. What Is IT’s Role in Collecting and Analyzing
Customer Data?
While your IT may currently be helping marketing
develop campaigns rather than collect/analyze data,
you should be aware that many IT departments
can provide strategically sound advice about datacollection tools and analysis techniques. What’s more,
using integrated systems from across the company,
they can provide data sets.
II. The Bottom Line
One of the keys to running a successful marketing
department is to track everything you do so that you
can show how you add value. Areas to measure
include number of prospects in the pipeline, customer
order and payment history, customer financial health,
share of each customer’s business, and rate of growth
compared to industry averages.
The marketing leaders from UTStarcom, K&L Gates, and Central
DuPage Hospital on:
Best Practices
for Analyzing Your
Customer Data and
Implementing Results
III. Must-Have Data Sources for Producing Accurate
Metrics
While a good customer relationship management
(CRM) system can store and present customer
information in myriad useful ways, you must also
ensure that the data you’re entering will produce
meaningful results. Examples include your customers’
business challenges, degree of saturation in particular
markets, and key industry sales trends.
Luis M. Dominguez
Executive Senior Vice President, International Sales,
Marketing, and Services, UTStarcom Inc.
Jeffrey J. Berardi
Chief Marketing Officer, K&L Gates LLP
IV. The Golden Rules for Collecting Customer Data
Feedback from your customers is invaluable
information for your company because it tells you what
they think about your products and service, and how
you should deal with them. You can gather such input
in many ways: through direct conversations, surveys,
focus groups, etc. But remember: even if the news is
negative, don’t forget to say thank you.
V. Essential Take-Aways
You can collect the best customer data in the world,
but if you can’t translate the results into actionable
marketing plans, you haven’t derived any value from
your efforts. Data can help you at all levels: identify
late-paying customers, plan production schedules,
retool your business-development plans, or, even,
forecast the future of your industry.
Contents
About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.2
Luis M. Dominguez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.3
Jeffrey J. Berardi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.6
M. Jill Brown . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . p.9
Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points . . . . . . . . p.11
M. Jill Brown
Vice President, Marketing and Communications
Central DuPage Hospital
G
ood data, properly organized, will tell you a story — the truth
— and allow you to determine what is going on with your business
and your customers. The first step is to develop the right tool sets
and technology that will capture what you need to know. The authors of
this ExecBlueprint discuss the value of establishing a robust customer
relationship management (CRM) system that can store and categorize your
customer data. But how do you attain such data? For starters, your IT
department should be able to provide meaningful datasets of company
information, including customer order and payment history, as well as
product information. However, you will also have to interact with your
customers (via conversations, surveys, and focus groups), and don’t disregard the negative feedback. Finally, you will need to examine overarching
industry trends to determine how they’re impacting your business. But then
what? Data should never be an end in itself, but rather a means. Here the
authors describe how they have used their customer data to solidify relationships, revise sales projections, and enter new markets. ■
Copyright 2010 Books24x7®. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited without the prior written permission of the publisher. This ExecBlueprints™ document was published as part of a subscription based service. ExecBlueprints,
a Referenceware® collection from Books24x7, provides concise, easy to absorb, practical information to help organizations address pressing strategic issues. For more information about ExecBlueprints, please visit www.execblueprints.com.
About the Authors
Luis M. Dominguez
Executive Senior Vice President, International Sales, Marketing, and Services,
UTStarcom Inc.
L
uis Dominguez joined UTStarcom
in November 2008 as executive
senior vice president of international sales, marketing, and services.
Mr. Dominguez, an accomplished executive with more than 32 years of leadership, business development, and sales
experience at Unisys Corporation, oversees all aspects of global sales, marketing,
and services efforts outside of China.
During his tenure at Unisys, Mr.
Dominguez was appointed president of
the company’s Latin America and
Caribbean Region (LACR) in 2003.
Under his leadership, the region achieved
consistent profit over-achievement and
order growth in excess of 26 percent
while reducing the cost base. In July
2007, he was appointed to the Unisys
Executive Committee as vice president
and general manager of worldwide
regional operations while retaining his
role as president of LACR. In this capacity, he managed regional operations on
a global basis. Prior to the promotion to
this dual role, Mr. Dominguez served as
vice president and general manager of
Unisys global infrastructure services for
Latin America. He joined Unisys
Corporation as a New Jersey sales representative in 1977.
Mr. Dominguez was born in Madrid,
Spain. He is a member of the Chamber
of Commerce and American Production
& Inventory Control Society, a member
of the advisory board for Baptist Health
International and serves on several industry, business, and economic associations
and councils.
☛ Read Luis’ insights on Page 3
Jeffrey J. Berardi
Chief Marketing Officer, K&L Gates LLP
J
eff Berardi is the chief marketing
officer for the global law firm K&L
Gates. As CMO, Mr. Berardi leads
firmwide marketing and business
development efforts for the firm’s 36
offices located across the U.S., Europe,
Asia, and the Middle East. Within this
role, he maintains primary responsibility
for the various function areas in the
department, including regional and
practice-based business development,
brand management, PR and media relations, and marketing technology.
Named as one of only five law firm
“innovators” featured in Law Firm Inc.
magazine’s cover story, “Innovators of
2008,” Mr. Berardi speaks regularly at
legal and professional service industry
conferences, and has written for or been
quoted in various publications.
Marketing The Law Firm, a law journal newsletter, also publicly recognized
the efforts of the firm’s marketing department, naming K&L Gates as one of the
top five law firms in marketing and communications for a second consecutive
year in its 2009 MLF 50. Since the survey’s inception five years ago, K&L
Gates has been listed among the top 20
law firms for marketing, and the 2009
ranking marks the third time that the
firm has landed in the top 10.
☛ Read Jeff’s insights on Page 6
M. Jill Brown
Vice President, Marketing and Communications, Central DuPage Hospital
M
. Jill Brown is the vice president of marketing and communications of Central DuPage
Hospital, serving since July 2007.
Ms. Brown has more than 20 years
of experience managing marketing
and communication services. Before joining Central DuPage’s team, she most
© Books24x7, 2010
recently led marketing strategy for Harris
Bank as vice president of marketing
services.
She earned a bachelor’s degree
from the University of Illinois and
an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate
School of Management at Northwestern
University.
☛ Read Jill’s insights on Page 9
About the Authors ExecBlueprints 2
Luis M. Dominguez
Executive Senior Vice President, International Sales, Marketing, and Services, UTStarcom, Inc.
Analyzing Customer Data
To analyze your customer, you
should use various tool sets. Therefore, you must begin with accurate
data, and you must have the right
tool sets and technology to analyze
the data and prepare it in ways that
make sense to you.
First and foremost, you need to
make sure that you have a solid
customer relationship management
(CRM) system to evaluate your
number one in this area, and here
are the facts. This data from your
organization allows your sales and
marketing teams to substantiate
that you have the best product in
the industry.
The IT Department’s Role in
Analyzing Customer Data
The IT department’s job is to provide integrated systems across the
Essentially, you not only need to get data, you
need to analyze it in a way that allows you to
derive value or take a required action.
Luis M. Dominguez
Executive Senior Vice President, International Sales, Marketing, and Services
UTStarcom, Inc.
customer input, forecasts, and
opportunities. You need to put all
of that information into categories
so that you know where in the
sales cycle a particular opportunity
falls (and how long it has been
there), so that you can take proper
action. If the opportunity has been
in one position too long, management may decide that it is not really
an opportunity after all; or they
may look further into what has
stalled it. Essentially, you not only
need to get data, you need to analyze it in a way that allows you to
derive value or take a required
action.
Obviously, it is important to use
statistical tool sets to measure
results. For example, you may have
said that your product would perform in a certain way — does it?
Technology and sales side data can
help you find out. Also, if you are
a market leader, you can use such
data in your customer sales and
marketing efforts — i.e., we are
© Books24x7, 2010
company that can yield individual
data sets, as well as to analyze data.
All of the company’s data should
be in one place; you do not want
to have multiple databases that do
not touch upon each other. If something goes wrong, you should be
able to make the fix by going to one
location.
Companies work in an integrated way; therefore, department
information can often be analyzed by different mindsets that will
provide different views of the
same data. An engineer will view
the data that is necessary for approving a product; sales might use
the same data to help position a
product from a sales or marketing
perspective; and IT has to understand how each of the company’s
business units interacts with their
customers. To that end, the IT
department should have continual
discussions with the other departments about how IT can help them
better accomplish their objectives.
Luis M. Dominguez
Executive Senior Vice President,
International Sales, Marketing, and Services
UTStarcom, Inc.
“Good data, properly organized, will
tell you a story — the truth — and allow
you to see what is going on with your
business and with your customers.”
• With company since 2008
• Previously with Unisys Corporation
since 1977, most recently as member
of the Executive Committee
• Recipient, 2000 Unisys Excellence
in Management award
• Bachelor’s degree, Business
Management and Economics, Kean
College
Mr. Dominguez can be e-mailed at
luis.dominguez@execblueprints.com
The best companies have IT
departments that are businessoriented in terms of product delivery, as well as businessknowledgeable. Simply put, they
want to leverage IT services and
technology to help the company’s
people do a better job. Essentially,
the IT department is the silent partner in the marketing effort; while
silent with respect to the technology, they should discuss how an IT
tool set can give the company’s
departments or business units what
they need. An IT department should
Luis M. Dominguez ExecBlueprints 3
Luis M. Dominguez
Executive Senior Vice President, International Sales, Marketing, and Services, UTStarcom, Inc.
strive not to confuse the business
people with its IT jargon.
Basically, the IT department
needs to think in terms of, “How
do I help you, and what do you
need?” The best IT departments are
very solution-oriented, as opposed
to those who tend to say, “Let me
tell why I can’t give you this.”
The IT department of today and
the future is also very much tied
to the business transformation
agenda; it has a seat at the tables
of the business strategy team —
and of the executive committee.
The IT team should therefore
become a very important part of
your strategic team; when you talk
about strategy, the IT team should
be thinking about what they can do
to make it happen, and make the
company more productive. The
best companies treat IT as a very
important business contributor;
rather than a separate unit that
reports to finance, IT’s function is
to supply what is needed for all
business functions.
Expert Advice
To understand where our customers are today, and where they are going in the
future, we typically collect customer feedback through sales contacts and regular
account management meetings and planning sessions with key customers. It is
important to have such discussions with the customer so that you can understand
their strategic-level objectives and plans. Your account teams should therefore be
heavily engaged at all levels of the customer’s business — the executive levels,
technology levels, and business levels. Because it is important to see whether
our internal findings match an independent view of what is happening, we — and
an independent source — conduct customer surveys.
believe that you must treat your
customer input, good or bad, as
a gift; saying “thank you” for that
gift encourages your customer to
tell you both sides of their experience, and gives you much needed
information to help you gain a
competitive edge. When your customer stops speaking to you,
they no longer care; a complaint,
however, means that they still do
care — and want you to listen and
do something about it. That is why
customer information and contact
is everything.
Examining Customer Data
The Role of Customer
Feedback in Developing
Future Marketing
Campaigns
Customer feedback is everything to
a company; it is your customer’s
way of telling you what is going on,
what they think, and how you
should deal with them on all fronts,
whether that feedback is in relation
to a customer service experience, a
product, the good things that you
do, or the bad things that you do.
A good company takes feedback
from customers — but a great company understands how to listen to
not only the good but also the bad,
and always says “thank you.” I
© Books24x7, 2010
(continued)
With respect to the customer data
we assemble, we always closely
examine accounts receivable —
when people do not pay, there is a
problem. Other important financial
metrics include payment and order
history, which should be compared
from quarter to quarter, and year
to year. While profitability data by
customer is critical, it is also important to determine whether the customer is growing with you, or if
their business is going down; such
metrics may be gleaned from order
volume in your product and service
areas. This data will indicate
whether you need to speak to a customer to learn what is happening
with their business. A fourth area
that should be examined is your
percentage of the customer’s business; in other words, if the customer spends X dollars in a
certain industry, how much are you
— versus your competitors — getting?
Using CRM to Forecast
Sales and Plan
Manufacturing Activity
CRM is a tool that gathers and
holds all of the data that you need
to analyze and share. It will also
allow you to categorize that data
so that you do not drown in it.
Instead, you decide on the key indicators that you want to measure for
each area (such as sales productivity, marketing campaign, and service delivery), and use CRM to
create a company dashboard that
you can review and take action on
regularly. It is about comparing
qualified committed forecast to
plan weekly, monthly, or quarterly,
and managing the gap between
them as a team using a routine
rhythm.
A good management team will
say, “Let’s take that CRM data and
compare it to our business plan. Do
we have enough activity to meet or
exceed our plan?” If you do not
perform that analysis, you may
be fooled into thinking that there
is enough activity to justify a
Luis M. Dominguez ExecBlueprints 4
Luis M. Dominguez
(continued)
Executive Senior Vice President, International Sales, Marketing, and Services, UTStarcom, Inc.
Know Your Customer: Data Tells the Story at UTStarcom
Key Customer Metrics:
What is each
customer’s order and
payment history?
(Which customers are
not paying their bills?)
How does this history
compare quarter to
quarter, year to year?
certain strategy. Secondly, all of
your business opportunities need to
have a rating — i.e., does a particular strategy/opportunity have a 50
percent, 75 percent, or 90 percent
probability of success? That is
important, because you have now
measured a proposed strategy
against your plan. For example, if
you know that for every four
opportunities in your pipeline your
industry says that you are probably
winning only one, you then will
want to measure your high-end
probability against your plan and
ask, “Am I winning enough to
actually make my plan?” If not,
then at least you have perceived the
true picture while you still have
the ability to take action in the
coming weeks, months, etc. Most
companies just use their customer
data to know their customers’
names; only later do they discover
that they did not make their plan
because they did not track qualified
opportunities against the plan. The
key is to track against the plan. If
© Books24x7, 2010
Which customers are
growing with you, and
which seem to be
experiencing their own
business problems?
you do not do this, it will be too
late to make any changes.
It is also important to gauge
how your pipeline breaks down by
sales stage, as we know each stage
takes time to execute before an
opportunity can move to the final
stage, closing the contract. You
must be assured that there are
enough pipeline opportunities in
your final stages to meet the plan.
These can be measured by opportunity count or by dollar. This is
where the focus should be because,
in order to meet this quarter’s plan,
you can only count on the opportunities in these final two stages,
given the time and effort required
to move the opportunity from
stage to stage. This will also help
you smooth out the peaks and valleys of forecasting to ensure that
you have a consistent business plan
underpinned by a manufacturing
plan to meet your numbers every
month.
Simply stated, you should use
CRM to smooth out those peaks
What percentage of the
customer’s business are
you receiving versus
your competitors?
and valleys, or you will play havoc
with your manufacturing facilities
— for example, you may wind up
manufacturing everything in one
month, and your factory will not
be geared up for that. If you can
spread your business activities over
several months, then your productivity will be better because certain
people will be working each month
on activities that close that month.
Your sales volume will meet your
resource requirements and, based
on your activity, you will know
where to best allocate your
resources. A good CRM system
tells you the deals you are working
on, but a better resource system
will tell you which deals have the
best chance of happening, and
which ones should receive your
best resources to ensure the win.
Because the nature of the business is people-centric, these steps
are critical in a services business;
you cannot make a profit if people
are on the bench and not charged
to a project/opportunity. ■
Luis M. Dominguez ExecBlueprints 5
Jeffrey J. Berardi
Chief Marketing Officer, K&L Gates LLP
The Importance of Data
Analysis Practices
One of the keys to running a successful marketing department is to
track everything that you do. Part
of what marketers sometimes struggle with is the idea of being able to
prove value, and in order to prove
value you need to be able to demonstrate growth in a variety of
ways. To that end, you have to set
benchmarks and track things over
track and measure is incredibly
important.
Using Data Analysis Tools
For our data analysis, we rely on a
variety of different tools including
a range of CRM software and business intelligence tools. Because a
whole host of providers offer this
kind of information, we try not to
limit ourselves to just one or two
We need to make sure that all of our research and
analysis is in some way actionable — we always
must have an end goal in mind.
Jeffrey J. Berardi
Chief Marketing Officer
K&L Gates LLP
time, so that when you hit a certain
milestone — whether it is six
months, one year, two years, or five
years — you are able to show that
you are improving in a variety of
different ways. If you are not
improving, you should know why
that might be.
Sometimes there is a fear of
what the data might show and people are worried about finding out
that maybe the numbers went
down in certain ways. At our company, we want to be able to see
whether we are growing or not
because, if we are not growing, we
need to figure out how to change
that. Factors outside of the marketing department’s or firm’s control
could be influencing this trend. For
instance, the global economic
downturn over the past couple of
years has resulted in a decrease in
work that is not unexpected or
controllable. For that reason, using
a variety of different tools to
© Books24x7, 2010
vendors. In addition, we have done
a lot with our own technology. Our
chief information officer is great at
determining whether we can create
our own software systems and
tools to provide important data. In
some cases we rely on the firm’s
intranet, and have built our own
systems that are able to provide the
most relevant data. For instance,
we have created a very robust business development-tracking tool
that allows us to collect different
types of information within the
business development team.
That being said, data analysis
software itself is really just a means
to an end; it is not a panacea or a
solution in and of itself. While we
are always looking at ways that
technology solutions can help us,
at the end of the day your success
will depend on the people on your
team who are analyzing the data
and making good use of it. For that
reason we need to make sure
that all of our research and
Jeffrey J. Berardi
Chief Marketing Officer
K&L Gates LLP
“Part of my job has been to make sure
that our team is aware that we want to
know what is happening — good or
bad.”
• Leads marketing and business development efforts for the firm’s 36 international offices
• Named “Innovator of 2008” in Law
Firm Inc.
• Firm listed among top 20 law firms
for marketing over the past five years
by Marketing The Law Firm
Mr. Berardi can be e-mailed at
jeffrey.berardi@execblueprints.com
analysis is in some way actionable
— we always must have an end
goal in mind. If we find that the
research shows X, then we take this
course of action. If the research
shows Y, then we take another
course of action. I have really tried
to steer us away from situations
where the data — or its analysis —
is the end in itself.
Working with the IT
Department
In professional services, specific
customer data is not necessarily as
important as information on what
Jeffrey J. Berardi ExecBlueprints 6
Jeffrey J. Berardi
(continued)
Chief Marketing Officer, K&L Gates LLP
our clients do, their business issues,
and the kinds of challenges that
they face. We are trying to learn as
much as possible about the things
our clients are involved in, industry trends, and so on. For those
purposes, I work very closely with
the CIO and the information technology department to make sure
that we are tracking and measuring that information. From a practical standpoint, the liaisons in our
respective departments correspond
with each other on a regular basis
regarding the specific projects that
either the CIO or I have assigned.
Our need for IT assistance has
absolutely increased. As technology
issues become more important
across the board, there is a significant amount of overlap between
our areas of responsibility. For
example, as our digital marketing efforts have become more
Expert Advice
We have taken a close look at the effectiveness of our electronic communications
over the past couple of years. That effort goes way beyond our Web site to include
a number of different elements. Members of marketing and IT are now working
together on search engine optimization, electronic communications (such as the
hundreds of client alerts and newsletters on legal issues that we send out each
year), social networking policies and tactics, and our online brand presence. The
rapid changes in technology have forced us to make sure that we stay ahead
of the curve and connect with our clients to a greater degree than ever before.
Keeping projects on track and managing them appropriately requires a very close
working relationship with the CIO and proper communication between our two
departments.
comprehensive over time, we are
communicating more and more
regarding how to use electronic
communications to effectively target our clients and prospects. I
think this new emphasis is representative of a broader shift in the
way that businesses view the importance of their digital marketing
efforts (see sidebar).
What is the Most Important
Customer Data for
K&L Gates’ Marketing Efforts?
Business activities
Business issues and challenges
Industry trends
© Books24x7, 2010
Challenges as a Result of a
Shifting Industry
The legal marketing industry has
changed tremendously over the
past five to 10 years. At one time
it was very much an administrative
function area. Legal marketers generally were very reactive to the
needs of individual lawyers rather
than the firm as a whole, and
focused much more on the marketing side, concentrating on the brand
more than anything else. Over
time, as firms became more sophisticated and grew into some of the
massive operations that we have
now, the marketing function has
become much more strategic and
has shifted to a business development focus that is more about serving clients and thinking about their
needs. The more strategic-minded
firms now realize it’s very important to think about how we can
serve clients better and thus increase
growth on the revenue side.
However, the marketing functions in some law firms have shifted
entirely from marketing to business
development, and this can pose a
bit of a problem. I believe that there
is a natural spectrum between marketing efforts and business development and, consequently, a
balance needs to be struck. The
Jeffrey J. Berardi ExecBlueprints 7
Jeffrey J. Berardi
(continued)
Chief Marketing Officer, K&L Gates LLP
purpose of marketing is to increase
the brand profile to raise awareness
of the firm (or individuals or practice areas), and that leads you
down the path of being able to pursue business development efforts
such as speaking with clients or
prospects about what you do and
what more you can do to help
them. The tendency for firms to
downplay brand marketing can be
very detrimental. There needs to
be a healthy balance between the
two areas, and that is how we operate at K&L Gates.
Trends and Challenges over
the Next 12 Months
It is hard to generalize about the
legal industry as a whole. I believe
© Books24x7, 2010
that we operate in one of the most
competitive industries in the world.
We compete on a regular basis with
the largest global firms, the smallest boutique firms, and everything
in between. In addition to law
firms, on occasion we compete
with other professional services
firms such as accounting, consulting, or financial firms. The issues
our firm specifically is facing are
fundamental: the need to stay
focused on clients, the need to keep
our service quality extremely high,
or the need to keep our expenses
low and deliver legal services in a
very efficient manner.
One of the major trends in the
legal industry has been consolidation, which has occurred with
regular and increasing frequency.
I expect that trend to continue.
K&L Gates is actually a byproduct of a number of different combinations over the years. Our
recent rapid growth has resulted
from the combination of a variety
of wonderful legacy firms that
now constitute a global platform,
and this is certainly a marketing
issue or challenge facing others in
the industry. The problem of how
to grow in a challenging economic
time, coupled with how to compete in an era of consolidation, is
another trend currently shaping
the industry. A handful of oncegreat firms are no longer in business due to a variety of market
forces, and survival of the fittest
is certainly in play here. ■
Jeffrey J. Berardi ExecBlueprints 8
M. Jill Brown
Vice President, Marketing and Communications, Central DuPage Hospital
Utilizing Data Analysis
Practices
CDH has limited data analysis
practices in marketing but has a
dedicated strategy team that is very
active in gathering and analyzing
market data. This data is gathered
from a number of sources, including our own volume records and
industry outcome data. When considering a business strategy question, the team uses data from a
I would consider the strategy
team to be best-in-class in the area
of data mining, even though efforts
so far have been limited to certain
direct-mail activities. The marketing team is on a trajectory to
become more data-driven and is
very fortunate to have the strategy
team on board in addition to a very
strong resource center with access
to industry publications.
When considering a business strategy question,
the team uses data from a number of sources to
provide a full picture of the best strategic course.
M. Jill Brown
Vice President, Marketing and Communications
Central DuPage Hospital
number of sources to provide a full
picture of the best strategic course.
In addition to sharing business data
with the marketing team, the strategy team also assists marketing in
specific promotional efforts. For
example, when looking to increase
penetration of a specific service in
a certain geography, the team will
provide a variety of information
including demographics, disease
incidence, and admitting data of
current physicians on the CDH
medical staff that are located in the
desired geography (see sidebar).
CDH is just beginning to employ
more advanced CRM practices. We
currently use CRM in determining
direct-mail distribution lists. We
are in the initial stages of replacing
the system that supports our call
center and the new system will
allow us to combine our CRM
practices for our mail, phone, and
Web customer contacts in the
future.
© Books24x7, 2010
Coordinating Marketing
with IT
Work with IT is really focused
more on development, not collecting or analyzing data. These development efforts, however, have
increased greatly in the past few
years. Many development projects
(e.g., Web site updates, the call center system replacement mentioned
above) are now done in collaboration with IT. Within marketing, we
have organized a technology team
with responsibility for the Web site,
M. Jill Brown
Vice President, Marketing
and Communications
Central DuPage Hospital
“Having a marketing group that can
‘talk’ technology works very well. The
team meets often with IT and this collaboration offers a great advantage for
us.”
• With hospital since 2007
• Over 20 years of experience managing marketing and communication
services
• Previously VP, marketing services, for
Harris Bank
• Bachelor’s degree, University of
Illinois
• M.B.A., Kellogg Graduate School
of Management, Northwestern
University
Ms. Brown can be e-mailed at
jill.brown@execblueprints.com
Expert Advice
Formulating New Campaigns and Initiatives One successful effort centered
on the desire to further penetrate a certain geography. We worked with our data
firm, CPM, to research and review information on the geography including disease
incidence, hospital volumes, and outmigration trends. We then spoke with our
strategy team and looked at our own internal data that detailed admitting diagnoses and physician referral patterns. The intersection of this data helped us to
determine the best way to increase our share in the target market, resulting in a
multi-faceted campaign with some elements targeted to physicians and some to
consumers.
M. Jill Brown ExecBlueprints 9
M. Jill Brown
Vice President, Marketing and Communications, Central DuPage Hospital
(continued)
becomes very clear (from the comments we hear) that many other
hospitals do not take this important step.
A small percentage of our budget goes toward collecting and analyzing customer data, and that has
remained fairly stable in the past
few years. However our strategy
team has greatly increased their
spend. While we do not compute a
specific ROI for CRM, we do use
consumer perception data to judge
the impact of marketing efforts in
driving business.
call center, and some data management efforts.
The Role of Customer
Feedback
Campaigns begin with a definition
of the target audience, which is
often identified through data we
have collected. The data is then
used to determine the scope of the
effort, ranging by implemented
media channel.
We actively gather consumer
feedback to inform our marketing
campaigns. We collect consumer
perception feedback annually and
© Books24x7, 2010
use that to direct overall efforts. In
addition, we are active users of
research on the way we use creative
in our campaigns. When we begin
a large creative development project we research concepts, usually
by using focus groups. We also use
online surveys and have recently
tried Web video surveys and journaling. We also gather data on consumers’ reaction to the competition.
Because most marketing organizations actively use research, this
practice seems very simple, but in
hospital marketing it is still a rarity. As we test consumer reactions
to creative from other hospitals it
Challenges in the Health
Care Industry
Great changes are expected in our
industry and data will be very
important in the next several
months. As health care reform takes
hold, we expect to see big changes
in how our hospital is used and
reimbursed. As the system changes
take hold, not only will we need to
gather data, but we also will need
to use the data to project trends and
adjust our thinking. We also expect
to see new competitive combinations and we will need to quickly
assess the impact of these market
changes on our volumes. ■
M. Jill Brown ExecBlueprints 10
Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points
I. What Is IT’s Role in Collecting
and Analyzing Customer Data?
If your marketing team is going to work
with data in a way that produces meaningful results, they will most likely require IT’s
tools, cooperation, and expertise. At many
companies, IT in fact functions as marketing’s “silent partner” that works behind the
scenes to provide the necessary technology
to collect and interpret useful data. Specifically, IT can:
• Help marketing develop and execute
an analysis strategy, based on a shared
knowledge of the company’s overarching mission and goals.
• Consult with marketing to determine
which tools and software (e.g., customer relationship management
[CRM] systems) are best suited to
meet its data-gathering and analysis
objectives.
• Advise marketing on how digital marketing techniques can effectively target
and track customers and prospects.
• Provide individual data sets according
to marketing’s specifications, using
integrated systems from across the
company.
II. The Bottom Line
While your company’s balance sheets provide one form of data that can be used to
evaluate marketing’s efforts, other analyses
will help you assess the progress of your
campaigns and overall strategy before the
final monthly, quarterly, or yearly results
are tallied. These can discover:
• How many prospects in your pipeline
are at the “final” stage of your sales
cycle?
• What are your customers’ order and
payment histories? How do they compare, quarter by quarter, year by year?
• Which customers are growing with
you? Which are not — and why?
• What percentage of your customers’
business do you have, and what percentage is going to your competitors
— and why?
© Books24x7, 2010
• How have sales — and other lead
indicators — improved (or declined)
year by year? What factors are
impacting this progress? Which can
you — or your company — control?
III. Must-Have Data Sources for
Producing Accurate Metrics
First and foremost, you need to make sure
that you have a solid customer relationship
management (CRM) system that can store
and categorize your customer information
in easy-to-access, meaningful ways. In
addition, such systems can create company
dashboards that display key indicators for
regular review. Then, to gain the most comprehensive understanding of your customer, the data that you enter into your
CRM should be collected from multiple
sources including:
• Your company’s pipeline opportunities
(i.e., prospective sales), and their position in your company’s sales cycle
• Regional and customer demographic
information
• Customer order and payment history
• Customer business activities, issues,
and challenges
• Sales volumes for your company and
industry
• Your company’s market share by
region
• Productivity of your recent and past
sales and marketing campaigns
• Maintaining relationships at all levels
of a customer’s business, including the
executive, technology, and business
areas
• Holding regular account management
and planning meetings with key
customers
• Administering company-sponsored
and independently-sponsored customer surveys
• Conducting customer focus groups
where reactions to upcoming campaigns are elicited
V. Essential Take-Aways
These days, the technology exists to collect
and manipulate customer data in many
fancy ways. However, attaining good data
should never be an end in itself. At the end
of the day, what matters is what your team
is doing with the results of that data: How
will they influence your course of action?
How will they ultimately lead to more
effective campaigns, stronger sales? Specifically, you can use data to:
• Substantiate product claims, thereby
strengthening your sales and marketing messages.
• Proactively meet with customers who
may be having business problems
(based on their payment history), so
that you can decide on an appropriate
course of action.
• Industry trends
• Check the accuracy of your probability ratings that you’ll win the work of
each prospective account.
IV. The Golden Rules for
Collecting Customer Data
• Appropriately schedule and allocate
production resources based on the
anticipated volume of upcoming
orders.
Of course, your customers are the best
source of information about themselves
and their impressions of your company and
its offerings. Further, you can assume that
if they’re willing to share such facts
(even if they’re complaints), they still care
about maintaining a relationship with you.
However, you should never take such feedback for granted; the best companies
always listen and thank customers — even
for negative comments. Other valuable
approaches for eliciting information directly
from customers include:
• Compare results against your business
plan: Is your new business activity
meeting or exceeding your plan?
• Identify promising new markets,
based on demographic profiles and
purchasing patterns.
• Prioritize business-development activities based on upcoming customer
needs and concerns, and overarching
industry trends, such as toward consolidation. ■
Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points ExecBlueprints 11
Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points
(continued)
?
10 KEY QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION POINTS
1
What data analysis practices does your company use at present (i.e., data mining,
business intelligence tools, etc.)? Would you consider your department and company to
be industry leaders in this area?
2
What CRM practices does your marketing department presently employ? How
have your CRM practices evolved in the past three years? What challenges do you
face?
3
How does marketing work with your IT department to collect and analyze your customer
data? What is the nature of your relationship? Has the need for IT assistance
increased? What does the collaboration of departments achieve for your company’s
marketing efforts?
4
What type of information does your marketing department look for when formulating
new campaigns and initiatives? How does this data specifically drive and improve your
marketing efforts? In what ways could your company improve in this area?
5
What are your department’s best practices for implementing the results from your
customer data analysis? How do these relate to the best practices generally used in
your industry?
6
What role do your employees play in your department’s use of data mining and
CRM? What training is necessary? How do you evaluate performance?
7
In the next 12 months, how do you plan to use CRM and data mining to effectively
drive future initiatives? Do you plan any changes to your current practices?
8
What role does customer feedback play in developing future marketing campaigns?
How do you collect this data (i.e., online surveys)? What impact does it have on the
success of your marketing campaigns?
9
What are your department’s best practices for managing the volume of customer data
collected? What challenges do you face? How do you deal with the issue of “too much
information”?
10
How do you measure the ROI for using CRM and analyzing your customer data to
manage your campaigns? How has CRM ultimately impacted the bottom line at
your company? What other benchmarks can be used to determine the impact that your
customer data analysis has had upon your operations?
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Ideas to Build Upon & Action Points ExecBlueprints 12