Unisys Overcomes 6 Common Dashboard Mistakes
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With Unisys Corp.'s executives demanding hard evidence of the return on marketing investment, the information technology company's marketing leaders searched for tools that measured the value of marketing. The challenges in creating a marketing measurement system were many, including:
- aligning marketing goals and activities with corporate strategy,
- measuring both strategic and tactical marketing initiatives,
- quantifying the metrics, and
- managing the cultural change required to implement and maintain a rigorous system.
If the process was difficult, however, the payoff was substantial. Far beyond the benefit of finally creating objective measures of marketing's impact (which itself was a huge step), a fully functioning measurement system now supports improved strategic decision making, budget allocation, and operational effectiveness at Unisys.
But they didn't just sail into Success Harbor without weathering a few storms along the away. In fact, there were six mistakes Unisys recognized (with the benefit of hindsight) that might trip up any dashboard project. Here they are:
Mistake No. 1 — Achieving Buy-In as High as the CMO
There's no doubt the CMO has to lead the charge into the brave new world of marketing measurement, but where do other top executives across the organization fit in? The answer: One C was not enough.
There's no doubt the CMO has to lead the charge into the brave new world of marketing measurement, but where do other top executives across the organization fit in? The answer: One C was not enough.
Unisys learned the importance of a top-down approach to building a marketing dashboard, and at the top sit the CEO and the board of directors. Unisys marketers, like marketers at lots of companies, felt ultra-secure in their definitions of the goals and objectives of marketing within the organization. Turns out that wasn't enough. Alignment of marketing's goals and objectives with corporate strategy wasn't good, and that situation needed to be cleared up before the marketing team constructed a measurement system.
In building toward the execution of a marketing dashboard, marketers need to look first at the expected business outcomes. If they looked at the trees, they'd miss the forest, right? And surely the close-up view of the twigs and branches of marketing initiatives offers a maze out of which only a lucky explorer could emerge at the right destination Īݠthe corporate strategy. A top-down approach ensures tight alignment around corporate goals and compliance with the often difficult demands of managing the system.
Mistake No. 2 — Compiling a Long List of Metrics
Before 2003, there was no single system by which Unisys could measure marketing ROI. The metrics marketing looked to came from more than a handful of sources and efforts. Within CRM systems, seemingly viable marketing metrics emerged, namely contacts, suspects, prospects, leads, sales, and pipeline health. From trade show data came attendance, leads, demonstrations, presentations, and white papers fulfilled. Brand-tracking studies brought brand awareness, advertising awareness, key attribute rankings, brand preference, and brand consideration. Next up were media reports with gross ratings points, cost per thousand impressions, insertions, and impressions. Don't forget employee and customer satisfaction data metrics, including satisfaction, awareness, knowledge, brand loyalty, share of wallet, and purchase intent. And last but not least, Web log data contributed hits, visits, click-throughs, downloads, and length of stay.
Before 2003, there was no single system by which Unisys could measure marketing ROI. The metrics marketing looked to came from more than a handful of sources and efforts. Within CRM systems, seemingly viable marketing metrics emerged, namely contacts, suspects, prospects, leads, sales, and pipeline health. From trade show data came attendance, leads, demonstrations, presentations, and white papers fulfilled. Brand-tracking studies brought brand awareness, advertising awareness, key attribute rankings, brand preference, and brand consideration. Next up were media reports with gross ratings points, cost per thousand impressions, insertions, and impressions. Don't forget employee and customer satisfaction data metrics, including satisfaction, awareness, knowledge, brand loyalty, share of wallet, and purchase intent. And last but not least, Web log data contributed hits, visits, click-throughs, downloads, and length of stay.
It's hard to believe anything could be missing, but ultimately each tactic needs to be aligned with a quantifiable business objective and goal. Looked at in that light, there were some clear gaps between what Unisys marketers needed to collect and what they were collecting. Check out the graphic that shows how Unisys made the connections.
Once it mapped the alignment, Unisys' marketing team put all the populating data for each metric into a desktop software application that allowed the group to present user-appropriate summary views of marketing effectiveness at a glance, with the level of detail and complexity adjusted for senior (less) or junior (more) users.
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Mistake No. 3 — Demonstrating the Efficiency of Marketing vs. the Effectiveness
Management already had difficulty in understanding the big picture of marketing's role in delivering value. Quantifying the wrong things didn't help. While marketing liked to boast that before Halloween it had created four of the five new brochures it had promised before year-end or 10 out of 10 new sales aids or one out of one intranet sites, these quantities didn't show the CEO, CFO, or board the marketing results they had requested. They certainly didn't make an impression that the higher-ups had to renew marketing's budget. More likely, the C-suite wanted to cut marketing's funding or receive paybacks on already-spent budgets.
Management already had difficulty in understanding the big picture of marketing's role in delivering value. Quantifying the wrong things didn't help. While marketing liked to boast that before Halloween it had created four of the five new brochures it had promised before year-end or 10 out of 10 new sales aids or one out of one intranet sites, these quantities didn't show the CEO, CFO, or board the marketing results they had requested. They certainly didn't make an impression that the higher-ups had to renew marketing's budget. More likely, the C-suite wanted to cut marketing's funding or receive paybacks on already-spent budgets.
In order to effectively make marketing visible to the C-level — in the best possible way — marketing leadership needs to identify meaningful inefficiencies, redundancies, and activities that do not add value for the company. The dashboard has to enable executive management to easily evaluate marketing performance on a financial level — the performance that matters to them — not on the basis of intermediary progress reports on task completion. Remember, dashboards should be about real progress, not project management.
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Mistake No. 4 — Seeing Symptoms, Not Diseases
The marketing dashboard program was designed to address a number of key challenges specific to structure, operations, and culture. One structural problem in the early stages of Unisys' dashboard implementation was a myopic focus on the top-level objectives without an easily accessible drill-down to the underlying tactics level(s).
The marketing dashboard program was designed to address a number of key challenges specific to structure, operations, and culture. One structural problem in the early stages of Unisys' dashboard implementation was a myopic focus on the top-level objectives without an easily accessible drill-down to the underlying tactics level(s).
This created an emotional roller coaster for the team because whenever a particular part of the plan fell below expectations, everyone knew it before marketing could diagnose and fix it. Adding the ability to drill-down to the tactical performance level, however, lent a view as to which specific component was causing the deficit. As a result, the dashboard moved from being just a reporting tool to a diagnostic one, simultaneously supporting not just overall performance management, but root-cause analysis as well.
Mistake No. 5 — Looking for the Silver Bullet
Technology is not a solution, it's an enabler. Surely Unisys would have preferred to pick a tool and voila! win the love and money of the C-level. Fortunately, there were none. Or at least none they felt could manage the information they needed to get the job done.
Technology is not a solution, it's an enabler. Surely Unisys would have preferred to pick a tool and voila! win the love and money of the C-level. Fortunately, there were none. Or at least none they felt could manage the information they needed to get the job done.
Believing they'd have to build it themselves, the Unisys team set out on the design phase, consisting of numerous interviews with more than 25 key company executives. Group goals, objectives, activities, and priorities were gathered from across various corporate areas within four business units and analyzed. The information then was aligned to corporate goals and agreed-upon marketing goals and objectives.
The exercise proved that tools should be considered only after the measurement system has been designed.
Mistake No. 6 — Placing Metrics at the End of the Marketing Process
A dashboard represents the beginning and the end of the marketing process. In the beginning, Unisys defined at a high level what it wanted to achieve. In the middle, it had to execute against a clearly defined task. This was the entry point for metrics, even though the end showed the results of the objectives through the lens of the metrics. A powerful aspect of having clarity around your objectives and defined metrics is the ability to drive the resulting dashboard through all parts of the marketing process so agencies, service providers, and other external support functions are properly aligned and have clarity on their expected deliverables, too.
A dashboard represents the beginning and the end of the marketing process. In the beginning, Unisys defined at a high level what it wanted to achieve. In the middle, it had to execute against a clearly defined task. This was the entry point for metrics, even though the end showed the results of the objectives through the lens of the metrics. A powerful aspect of having clarity around your objectives and defined metrics is the ability to drive the resulting dashboard through all parts of the marketing process so agencies, service providers, and other external support functions are properly aligned and have clarity on their expected deliverables, too.
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Conclusions
To avoid the six mistakes described above, Unisys offers the following 6 Keys to Success.
To avoid the six mistakes described above, Unisys offers the following 6 Keys to Success.
- Achieve buy-in as high as the CEO. You'll need it for a context of success.
- Consolidate a comprehensive list of metrics into the most relevant, insightful few.
- Demonstrate the effectiveness of marketing by presenting progress in financial and business terms, not marketing process intermediary stages.
- Make sure you can drill down for diagnostic insights, if not predictive ones too. Your dashboard should be more than a reporting tool.
- Accept that there is no silver-bullet measurement software. Take the time to do a thorough internal needs assessment and functional design specification. Then look to see if third-party software can support your needs.
- Place metrics at the beginning of the marketing process, not just at the end.
