Allocadia
Marketing Performance Management Software
You might recall in one of our previous blog posts, we chronicled a project wherein we created a custom Marketing ROI dashboard for a client. In this Journey-in-Action recap, we recommended that companies should first try to utilize spreadsheets so they can better evaluate the various Marketing Performance Management (MPM) platforms. The spreadsheets are a great place to start so you can ask the right questions of vendors, and can gather specific business and user requirements prior to the selection and purchase of an MPM solution.
We recognize that managing Marketing ROI via spreadsheet becomes quite a hassle in the long run, and that it’s prone to manual data entry errors. We also know that spreadsheets can be a nightmare to maintain particularly if you are working in a globally dispersed organization. Therefore, this month’s Technology Review is dedicated to Allocadia.
Before we take a deep dive into their cloud-hosted software solution, let me first give you the definition of MPM. According to Gartner, “Marketing performance management (MPM) encompasses the technologies and services for solutions that support marketing’s ability to gain access to insights, analyze data, make predictions, and optimize marketing programs, campaigns and resources. At the foundational level, MPM includes a data repository, BI tools and analytical workbenches. At the strategic level, MPM provides role-based access to information and KPIs through dashboards, visualization, point-and-click analysis, modeling, simulation and optimization.”
The catalysts for the recent increase in adoption of MPM platforms are:
1. The Digital Revolution
Not surprisingly, the insights, data and intel we now have at our disposal due to marketing automation, content management, customer relationship management and digital marketing applications has made it possible to understand customer buying behavior, and has given marketers an incredible toolset by which to test tactics, messages, promotions, prices, etc. for optimizing marketing spend.
2. Executive Demand
Senior executives are very much aware that Marketing can be a tremendous expense if not managed, but they are equally aware of the increased visibility into customer buying behavior that can now hold CMOs accountable for their contributions. They understand how Marketing can now be a major competitive advantage, and are looking for ways in which to transform Marketing into a profit center.
I was first exposed to Allocadia at the end of last year (2017) so they may have released some new features since the time of this review. In a nutshell, I give this application two-thumbs up.
Allocadia is a cloud-hosted solution that has the ability to provide a global view of marketing budgets and expenses with a variety of user-defined access rights so teams can stay connected and gain full transparency into the effectiveness of their marketing efforts. It integrates with most Marketing Automation, ERP and Customer Relationship Management systems, which gives cross-functional teams the ability to access information in near real-time and reduces the data handling nightmare of tracking marketing expenses.
The dashboards are customizable depending on your role and data access rights which gives a fantastic overview of pipeline health, remaining budget, current expenditure and much more.
At any given time, a user can review the health of their programs and can understand which activities are driving conversions without the headache of consolidating spreadsheets. During the configuration of the platform, companies can create an appropriate taxonomy to allocate planned activities and expenses so the entire team is aware of how data is categorized and attributed. You can establish as many tags on each budget item or actual expense as desired. This helps you slice and dice the data in ways that gives you valuable insight.
For example, you might want to understand how you are performing at targeting specific personas, or perhaps would like to know how much of your budget is left for graphics design. You can visualize your spending based on a number of parameters which allows you to have better control over the activities and expenses as they relate to conversions.
The planning and budgeting part of Allocadia can be used as a tool for establishing quarterly or annual budgets. For example, if you are a large organization with multiple business lines, you will benefit from having one system with a singular view of the complete budget vs. silos of information that require manual roll-up. If you are a business line with several products and field marketing agents, you will benefit from the ability to distribute your marketing budget based on products, segments, regions, etc.
CFOs will love the platform because they will suddenly be able to forecast more accurately by having both early understanding of pipeline health and by looking at forecasted marketing spend. The fact that Allocadia can integrate with many of the big ERP systems such as Oracle, Sage and SAP to name a few, means accounting departments can understand marketing spend as it happens and will no longer have to wait until end of quarter.
For Sales Teams, you can no longer complain about lack of visibility into what Marketing is doing to help grow the pipeline. Likewise, Marketing will have the ability to demonstrate through data where your highest quality leads are generated. Together, the teams can drive revenue through conversions by staying focused and by creating a common understanding of how best to attract and convert leads and prospects. Allocadia also has strong partnerships with Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce, but has the ability to integrate and play nice with other CRM systems as well.
My favorite part of the platform, and I hope they will continue to evolve this functionality to make it more robust, is the fact that you can do if/then scenarios to understand the ramifications on the pipeline if you choose to increase/decrease investment in a particular tactic, campaign, program, etc. For a marketer who has been through budget cuts, I am so happy to see this feature. It’s an excellent tool to help marketers demonstrate the likely outcome on sales forecasts if marketing budgets are reduced.
As with most MPM platforms, Allocadia integrates with various marketing automation systems as well. This helps marketers pair lead metrics and impressions typically captured in a marketing automation platform to the cost of the activity which can then be tied to the sales pipeline.
When you are ready to tackle Marketing ROI as a strategic initiative, you will definitely want to review all the available technology options. Allocadia is a strong contender and well worth the time to evaluate. They are incredibly responsive, helpful and informative during the demo process. Best of all, they asked good questions so they could understand what our business objectives were before trying to sell us a solution. In fact, they were honest enough to tell us the platform might be overkill for our needs. Advocating on behalf of the customer - a characteristic I truly appreciate.