Marketing programs are complex machines with intricate moving parts. Like any other business process, marketing execution needs to be evaluated to make sure that all the gears are working correctly. Reviewing your program can prevent cash leaks, waste, and yield a lower total cost of execution without sacrificing any campaign activities.

Lately, companies have come to us knowing that they need to evaluate or make a change in their process, but they’re not quite sure where to begin or how to start. How do you bring discipline to this multi-faceted marketing process? With the A-B-C’s of marketing fulfillment evolution, you can see where and how to start making changes that can close the loop and streamline the supply chain.

Assess the Current Situation

Objectively assess the current marketing fulfillment process. Pull back the curtains and take a deep dive into the existing process. Question everything. Involve other departments and divisions to get a good understanding of who is doing what. Document the process as it is by drawing a process flow or map. Chances are there is room for improvement because many processes that have developed over time may be band-aided together. Also, to assess where you stand compared to your peers, see our self-assessment.

Build a Scalable Solution

Prioritize areas of improvement and construct a plan to address those issues. Make sure you take visibility into account. Increasing visibility is one of the most important improvements you can make. It allows you to deeply dive into analytics, improving demand planning, and evaluate which marketing mix is working. You’ll also want to consider evaluating your analytics. Based on your analytics, your vendor should offer recommendations and help you reduce waste, time-to-market and overall spend.

Consider Consolidation

You really only need one good partner versus many vendors. In a recent study we did with Forrester Research, Inc., we found that two out of the three main problems marketers report have to do with their vendors. Consolidating reduces the resources required to manage multiple vendors, and leverages your larger spend for discounted rates.

To get the most benefit from consolidating vendors, you must consolidate with a scalable partner who can quickly react to the changes in your marketing campaigns. Find a partner that will challenge your thinking, push you out of your comfort zone and set you on the track for success.

A well-run program has a loop of continuous feedback in place, constantly monitoring the performance of the program, and identifying areas for improvement. If you can refocus some time and energy into evaluating your marketing fulfillment program, like other business process improvements, it could pay off big—saving millions of hard and soft costs along the way.