The marketing technology landscape is immensely complex and its ever changing and evolving with new platforms emerging everyday. Should your Marketing Technology Platform Evaluation strategy go with an Open Source or Enterprise solution? Do you need an e-commerce platform, content management, social media management, analytics, e-CRM, adserving, monitoring or email platform?
Do you need all of them? Maybe you already have an Open Source CMS but need an extension or plugin? Maybe one that performs more than one function is required? Do you need automation or self service? Easy integration with other services? Customisation options that don’t require additional tech support from IT?
Scope and Methodology
The digital technology assessment aims to deliver a digital technology As-Is analysis for clients, identifying gaps and future opportunities.
Based on leading practice benchmarks we assess the technology against three levels of maturity in a Marketing Technology Platform Evaluation.
Scoring Criteria
- Personalisation – Delivering targeted content and adoptive web experience based on information you know about each visitor
- Multi channel Integration – How well the technology can combine to work together to deliver a multichannel experience
- Automation – How easy is it to automate? What can be automated? Is AI used? Is full automation possible?
- Self Service – Can your team execute software features without expert ot technical support?
- Customisation Can your team customise software features without expert ot technical support?
- Reusability – The ease of re use the technology to meet their needs
- Industry best practice – The rating of the technology in the market place (source: secondary research)
Data Sources
- Interviews with your team and key stakeholders
- Your internal documentation
- Secondary Research
Target Audiences
It is important to consider the audiences that you are targeting when delivering a new digital platform. Or even if evaluating new or existing technology to ensure you are able to make technology decisions to best meet the needs and requirements of your audiences.
Visualisations of Technology Stack
We will visualise your requirements and also deliver a “conceptual” technology capabilities needed visualisation. Example below is a conceptual content delivery technology capabilities needed diagram.
Gap Analysis
Based on all the information we collect we will conduct a Gap Analysis of your current stack vs your requirements.
Roadmaps & Opportunities
A Marketing Technology Platform Evaluation project will align the AS IS analysis to each transformational targets to identify key opportunities. We categorise each technology component on a matrix value / effort and then identify GAPS in current technology and prioritise opportunities for each your business based on your transformational targets . Our approach is
- Categorise all the digital technology components to highlight value vs. effort
- ‘Value’ = weighted value
- ‘Cost/Effort’ = Time, resource and risk, Agency and Systems Integrator
- Align GAPS in AS IS analysis to BU transformational targets
- Identify key opportunities
- Incorporate opportunities in technology roadmap
Additional support we provide
We can support you in multiple areas of marketing technology platform selection and evaluation.
– Detailed objectives planning and requirements gathering
– RFQ, RFP creation
– Vendor evaluation and assessment
– Evaluation of RFQ / RFP response against requirements
Marketing Technology Platform Evaluation Process
All of our consultants have worked for large blue chip organisations on the client and consulting side. They bring real world experience of platform selection, implementation and usage. Many of us have our favourites for managing specific functions. Some of us are pro-Open Source, others swear by
Enterprise offerings.
However, when it comes to your platform selection we are vendor autonomous and follow a strict protocol and “line of attack” in scoring and evaluating potential platform choices against their ability to deliver against your requirements.
As mentioned, some of our team are consultants who have done stints at the Big 4 consultancies e.g. Accenture who are renowned for their systems integration capabilities. Other team members have worked on technology selection projects on the client side. We couple these diverse skill sets together to hone our selection methodology and add a dash of intuition / industry insight to ensure we find the best solution for our clients.