Some insights from ISBM and our recent Members Meeting on “Brand the Process”
At a recent meeting of ISBM, Craig Maxwell, Corporate VP Technology and Innovation at Parker Hannifin, enlightened us with a view on how he’s built a strong market and customer connection to the R&D function at Parker.
This powerhouse firm has led the way before – with innovations in value pricing, marketing process, and tools and techniques for improving marketing. Although the details of this process are quite proprietary, Parker’s “WIN” program which includes “Winovation,” “Winmap,” and “Winvalue” are an important part of their arsenal of tools for succeeding in difficult business markets.
Winovation: helps tie marketing and a customer view to the innovation process at Parker, and enables Parker to rapidly build a business case for innovation projects.
Winmap: a detailed approach for building a strong market action plan, enabling a more uniform but flexible process at Parker which allows for elements of this diverse firm to learn from one another, increases discipline in the process, and is proven to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their marketing, and
Winvalue: A system for better understanding the value of what are often quite complex Parker offerings, and pricing to value.
Craig pointed out that branding the process, communicating it strongly, using practical and easy to understand visualizations, have enabled stronger processes at Parker, and a much greater degree of view to the market and customer in all of their processes.
At the same ISBM Members Meeting Carlos Cardoso, the CEO of Kennametal, in a very inspirational talk discussed the importance of building clear, flexible, easy to describe processes for accomplishing goals. Although this can be overdone, he talked the importance of process maps and enabling people to communicate better with one another to work across “silos” and to effectively begin the elimination of those all too dangerous “handoffs.”
We often hear that the “handoffs” are very dangerous places. Breakdowns in the communications, reflections at the interface, major execution discontinuities seem to always be lurking at the “handoffs”.
Frederic Jung, CFO at Arizona Chemical pointed out that a good strong process, with a clear map at Arizona Chemical enabled a much stronger tie between the marketing function, their markets, and the sort of decisions made in the CFOs office. He was abuzz with great quotes including, “If I see a cost, and I don’t know what it is, shame on me for not cutting it.” Another quote that resonated with our audience of business-to-business marketers was “As a CFO I understand how difficult the processes of business marketing can be. I know that there are always assumptions and occasionally I have to make a leap of faith, in helping to build a stronger model of how we can be more accountable. I’ll make that leap – but please don’t make it the Grand Canyon.”
It was also pointed out that good strong people can overcome weak process – and often do – they use their own powers of persuasion, credibility, and knowhow to overcome processes that are not well thought through, or well communicated. However, as soon as though key people get moved to another position, things begin falling apart.
Branding the process
Craig Maxwell pointed out that one of the things that broke through the clutter and began moving things forward more rapidly at Parker Hannifin was just the fact that they created a brand for the process. The core values behind the process, the personality of what the process owners are like, how people should feel when they connect with the process – more empowered, more able to deal with difficult challenges, more secure in what the next step is, and importantly – how to communicate with everyone involved in the corporation required for execution in ways that ensure that things will be more likely to be executed.
So, in summary, working to mobilize organizations for execution, we get back to the basic elements:
• Do you have a strong process(es)?
• Is it simple and easy to communicate – graphically and through a variety of media?
• Is it “branded?” Not just with a logo or catchy words, is there a real brand behind the process – something that creates a relationship among people who are looking to implement?
• And, is the process strong enough so that if the people implementing the process change, the process will continue, grow, and be executed?
Ralph
B-to-B Leadership Board Underway
Fred Wiersema is underway now doing a variety of preliminary ethnographic and interview research to help ISBM set the stage for research moving forward to the end of the decade.
And… some of the issues that he’s connecting with are fairly primal. One key one is just what is marketing anyway? This question comes up again and again. Is the word not serving us well any longer?
In doing the research for this we came across a very interesting article – see it on our website – from the World Journal of Management Volume 2 #1 March 2010 by Roger Brooksbank, Janet Davey, and James Macintosh.
The article is entitled Marketing’s Great Identity Crisis: A Revised Definition and an Urgent Research Agenda and can be viewed here: http://wbiaus.org/6.Rog.pdf
In this great paper, Brooks-Bank, Davey, and Macintosh outline how our very practice – not just B-to-B but B-to-C as well – is undergoing a fairly significant identity crisis as we move through this decade. They outline the causes to this, and some pathways to the cure.
Among other things in this interesting paper is their definition of marketing – or shall I say a proposed new definition.
Marketing is…
A philosophical, strategical, and operational managerial discipline involving:
1. The creation of a customer centric organization;
2. The identification of appropriate target markets and corresponding value propositions and in each case;
3. The development of satisfied customers in a socially and environmentally responsible manner at a planned financial return
The authors have carefully thought through every word of this definition. Looking for something to talk about at your next marketing managers meeting? You might cite this definition – or pass out their wonderful paper and have a discussion.
By the way, the researchers Brooksbank, Davey, and Macintosh cite a more seminal paper that was published in 2009 by the American Marketing Association by the prestigious researchers David Reibstein, George Day, and Jerry Wind– a guest editorial in the Journal of Marketing entitled: Guest Editorial: Is Marketing Academia Losing Its Way?
In this seminal paper, Dave, George, and Gerry, good friends of ISBM call both The Marketing Science Institute and the Institute for the Study of Business Markets to task for helping to lead large, multi-researcher projects to have significant impact on the practice moving forward in the middle of the decade. This paper basically forms the foundation for the B2B Leadership Board activity underway at ISBM. Don’t miss it.