Why Global Market Leader Rohde & Schwarz Chose Marketing Resource Management
How can an enterprise with 12,300 employees spread all over the world bring greater clarity and transparency to its marketing? With Marketing Resource Management. After all, future challenges in marketing can only be tackled efficiently with the help of a central platform for planning, budgeting, and global collaboration.
Rohde & Schwarz had long been hoping to introduce a central marketing platform for all its employees. A few years ago, the company decided to restructure its marketing, providing the perfect opportunity to introduce a Marketing Resource Management solution as part of the change process.
The headquarters of this technology enterprise are in Munich, but its 12,300 employees are based in over 70 countries – so the company wanted an MRM platform that could facilitate greater transparency and clarity in marketing. The aim was to find a solution that made it easier to answer questions such as: Where are we at now? What are we doing globally? How much money are we spending?
The Starting Point: Time-Consuming Coordination and Planning with Excel and PowerPoint
Like many other companies, Rohde & Schwarz previously made use of emails, PowerPoint, and Excel when planning, organizing, and coordinating marketing.
Before introducing MARMIND, it was therefore difficult to communicate and coordinate with colleagues in other regions and countries, says Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz.
“A few topics are managed from our headquarters in Munich, but we discuss and reach decisions together with colleagues from other regions, because marketing can work very differently in other places. We realized that we needed a central platform for global collaboration.”
Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz
The Aim: Greater Transparency in Marketing and Clarity over Budgets and Costs
The company not only required a central platform for communication and collaboration but also hoped to achieve greater transparency. The headquarters in Munich needed to maintain an overview of marketing activities in the individual countries and the costs involved. Greater clarity around budgets was a further aim.
Monica Paul explains that using Excel and PowerPoint for marketing purposes had become too chaotic and unclear, creating a great deal of extra work:
“We held meetings where the regions presented their work. The different country teams were sent Excel lists to fill in and consolidating the resulting data was extremely time-consuming.”
Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz
A further aim was to improve collaboration during the implementation of corporate design guidelines, particularly in order to support smaller countries.
Wanted: A Flexible Solution for Complex Structures in Marketing
As well as meeting numerous other requirements, MARMIND fulfilled two fundamental criteria:
- MARMIND does not have to be hosted in the cloud – it can easily be hosted locally in the customer’s IT environment.
- The software is extremely flexible and can be customized to meet a company’s individual needs.
Rohde & Schwarz have always placed great importance on giving individual countries a say in marketing structures – making flexibility and customization important topics. MARMIND was the only product able to deal with the resulting level of complexity.
Budgets and costs varied greatly between countries and all of this information could be mapped in MARMIND, as Monica Paul explains:
“Each country can work in their own way – in some cases, budget and costs are managed very differently, but in reporting we can easily bring together the data and see all relevant information at a glance.”
Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz
Personal Support during Implementation as the Key to Success
As Rohde & Schwarz’s marketing was to be completely reorganized, MARMIND was introduced as part of an overarching change process that came with significant challenges. But Monica Paul highlights that they always felt well supported by the project team at MARMIND.
“The team incorporated all the features we needed, exactly as we imagined. And if something didn’t work or there was a problem, the team always took action quickly, so we always made good progress.”
Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz
Those involved in the project at Rohde & Schwarz were particularly happy to see that many of their ideas and suggestions for improvement have been incorporated into the standard version of MARMIND.
They have watched MARMIND develop enormously over the last five years as great new collaboration features have been added and the look and feel of the software gradually fine-tuned.
Professional Planning of Marketing Programs Using an Annual Calendar
Rohde & Schwarz’s marketing team has now been working with MARMIND for over five years. And results have been more than satisfactory.
For example, it was possible to professionalize the entire planning process. Short-term planning of marketing programs has been replaced by a long-term plan created at the start of the business year, which is kept to as far as possible over the next 12 months. This means that colleagues always have access to the bigger picture and can check which marketing activities are currently being implemented in a particular country.
A Clear Overview of Budget and Costs – All over the World
There is now also far greater transparency of budgets and costs. Instead of having to first compile the information, a time-consuming process, employees can now simply check MARMIND to see who has allocated which budget, how much has already been spent, and what the forecast is. This can even be viewed on different levels – per country, per market, worldwide, or per product.
Easy Collaboration and Coordination
What’s more, collaboration and coordination have become much simpler. There is no longer any need to spend time sending multiple emails – MARMIND provides a central communication platform where the head office and regional teams can, for example, compare use cases or discuss which channels work best in which regions.
Sharing documents is also quick and easy – files are simply uploaded to MARMIND in the relevant context and linked. Certain processes, such as requests for ad creatives, are managed using workflows and automated.
Monica Paul explains that this makes her work much easier:
“I’m now in contact with colleagues all over the world, which wasn’t the case before. I understand their challenges, needs, and successes – and I can support them better, because we not only work on the same platform but use the same terminology.”
Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz
Automation of Routine Marketing Tasks
Several team members particularly appreciate the option to automatically create to-dos using checklists. Instead of working out the tasks from scratch each time, they are predefined on the checklist. For example, as soon as the mailing date for a newsletter has been set, the deadline for each item on the to-do list is calculated automatically.
Tasks for several newsletters can therefore be planned and allocated within minutes, dramatically reducing the time spent on routine tasks.
Are You Considering Introducing Marketing Resource Management Software?
Monica Paul shares a tip for any company thinking of introducing a Marketing Resource Management platform:
“MARMIND isn’t the type of software that you can simply let employees play around with. There are just too many features for that to work. Instead, start by taking time to consider how to best manage your processes and structures – there is almost nothing you can’t include in MARMIND.”
Monica Paul, Project Manager for Marketing Planning at Rohde & Schwarz
