Marketing Automation for corporate groups

When complexity becomes a challenge

Marketing managers at corporations and international brands must orchestrate complex organisational structures every day. Although they ask themselves the same questions when rolling out campaigns as their colleagues in medium-sized companies, their sphere of influence is much more complex. The size of a company can be a real challenge in marketing. This is exactly why Marketing Automation exists.

How can campaigns be scaled efficiently? How can maximum flexibility be ensured in local realisation? And how do you keep track of budgets and fulfil all compliance requirements? Questions like these concern all marketing professionals in companies with decentralised sales structures. What distinguishes them from one another is the size of the company they work for. This is because the marketing organisation of large corporations operates on a completely different scale to that of medium-sized companies: while they may have 50 marketing managers and manage a few thousand marketing assets, many large brands work with hundreds of thousands of marketing assets, hundreds of locations or partners as well as countless monthly marketing processes.

Requirements for an Enterprise solution

This also means that central brand guidelines must be enforced across hundreds of locations and multi-stage approval processes must be adhered to for thousands of campaigns running in parallel. If compliance violations occur, it must be possible to verify who approved what and when.

Another aspect is that corporate groups do not work with isolated marketing tools, but require seamless integration into existing system landscapes:

• ERP systems for budget planning and controlling
• CRM systems for customer data management
• PIM systems for product information
• BI tools for comprehensive analyses
• HR systems for user authorisations

Complex corporate structures therefore require a versatile and scalable Marketing Platform. This is precisely our speciality!

Example 1: Multi-brand strategy at AMAG Import AG

Our customised solution for AMAG Import AG shows how complex Enterprise Marketing Automation can be. As an importer of various car brands, AMAG faced the challenge of managing several premium brands in a trilingual portal.

Our solution included:

• Multi-brand Management: different brands, each with their own CI guidelines, in one system
• Multilingualism: German, French and Italian for the Swiss market
• Complex authorisation structures: different user groups with brand-specific access rights
• Centralised control with local flexibility: Switzerland-wide coordination with regional adaptation options

Example 2: Successful brand change at Baloise

Even a brand change for a large company is a difficult matter: the insurance company Basler, with over 550 independent sales partners, was faced with the challenge of orchestrating a complete corporate identity change. With our Marketing Automation, the transition from Basler to Baloise was well thought out and successful: the coordinated rollout planning was carried out via the Marketing Plan, which centralised timings, measures and responsibilities for each sales partner. The time-controlled asset release automatically deactivated old CI elements and templates and made the new CI elements and templates available on time in the fresh design. This guaranteed a seamless transition.

5 success factors for Enterprise Marketing Automation

Marketing Automation for major brands goes far beyond the simple digitalisation of processes and always takes specific Enterprise requirements into account:

1. Scalable System Architecture: Enterprise solutions must be designed from the ground up for high user loads and large volumes of data.
2. Granular Rights Management: in large organisations, it is crucial that each user receives exactly the authorisations they need for their tasks. This can range from role-based access control to time-limited authorisations for temporary projects or campaigns. In any case, differentiated access rights at different hierarchical levels are essential.
3. Workflow Automation for approvals: while smaller companies often get by with simple approval processes, corporations require highly complex, automated workflows for multi-stage approval processes, defined escalation mechanisms in case of delays and automatic Reminders.
4. Enterprise Integration and API-First approach: modern Enterprise Marketing Automation Platforms must have extensive APIs and offer standardised integrations.
5. Advanced Analytics and Reporting: groups need strategic insights such as KPI dashboards for various management levels or ROI analyses at campaign, regional and product level.

ROI and Competitive Advantage

Marketing Automation for corporate groups pays off measurably on several levels: large brands benefit from considerable increases in efficiency, for example, due to lower personnel costs and significantly shorter lead times for campaigns. At the same time, costs can be noticeably reduced through centralised procurement, optimised print runs, and more precise demand planning. Quality also increases: brand messages become more consistent, market launches faster, compliance risks decrease, and the customer experience is improved through more relevant communication at the POS.

Companies that opt for a Marketing Management System and successfully master the complexity of their marketing will gain a sustainable competitive advantage through consistent, strong brand management and improved local relevance. In addition, a well-structured and flexible Marketing Platform will allow you to react much faster to changes in the market.

Are you mastering complex marketing challenges and would like to know more about Enterprise Marketing Automation? Then get in touch with us!