A Data Democracy – As American As Apple Pie
The term “governance” stems from the root word “govern”. Data Governance represents a systematic way of managing data assets through identified processes and policies. Within the context of “data governance”, creating a data democracy – a governing body of employees who determine through best practices, knowledge of their data access needs and their internal data […]
Beware Of The Threat Within — Protect Your Data.
Online hackers generally target financial institutions, major retailers and anyone holding large amounts of consumer data (i.e. credit card companies). Every few months some major corporation is the victim of a data security breach. Whether the thief gets ahold of sensitive consumer data or sensitive internal data, the companies cry foul, promise to investigate and […]
Danger: Soliciting Unqualified Opinions
One of the most challenging internal jobs for marketers is attempting to convince management to make a change—to take a different path with advertising, introduce a new product or service, partner or merge with another company, revise pricing based upon market activity, or employ strategies to stifle the competition. That challenge is exacerbated when internal […]
Business Politics
Behind the traditional “Four P’s” of marketing lies a well-known but rarely discussed cousin—the fifth P. This one stands for politics. Inter-company politics is as much a part of today’s fast-paced, global business economy as it was back in the days of buggy whip production. As a marketer, it is your job to drive your […]
Not All Top Performers Belong In Management
One of the most common business assumptions is that employees that excel in their position will make great managers. If an individual is creative and knows how to make things happen within the company, couldn’t they mentor and lead a team just like him or her? What genius on your part to promote them to […]
People: Your Biggest Asset
Whether you’re in a 100-person company or a 2,000-person company, and whether you use just a few external vendors or hundreds, one rule remains: managing internal and external personnel is necessary for overall company growth, cost containment, and deployment against critical initiatives. Manual management of resources and vendors has some serious setbacks: Favoritism: Vendor selection […]
Culture Shocked
Having worked for eight companies and consulted with many more, I have seen all types of business cultures. But when you boil them down, there are really just two kinds: structured and unstructured. Structured cultures involve an approved “code of conduct,” which is enforced by management. In an unstructured culture, the behavior of the leader […]
IT Developers Reporting To Marketing? Crazy Beautiful.
Okay, the title may have raised an eyebrow or two. However, sometimes to make colossal leaps ahead of the competition some completely unconventional strategies may need to be attempted. At a large consumer products firm they successfully integrated their Ecommerce marketing and Ecommerce IT divisions and realized some quite spectacular results. The company was expanding […]
20 Lessons Learned The Hard Way
Over the course of my career, I’ve had the good fortune of learning some valuable lessons. Following are a few key ones I encourage you to master to avoid the pitfalls along the gruesome climb up the corporate ladder. Don’t sacrifice “good enough” for perfect. Waiting costs time, revenue, and competitive advantage. Most times a vetted […]
CDOs, CMOs And Future Marketers
As the old days of Marketing Communications have been replaced by Marketing Technologies, marketers themselves have evolved from the days of “spray and pray” marketing to embrace new technologies, tools, and analytics. Marketers of the future can be found at the intersection of marketing and information technology. Traditionally, marketers focused on things such as product, […]