ISM - Can Creative Vision Help Your Bottom Line?

 

I attended the Institute for Supply Management Annual Conference in San Diego, April 25-28.

A particularly interesting session, entitled Can Creative Vision Help Your Bottom Line focussed on innovation in the marketing spend category.

Facilitated by Carla Stratfold, CEO on OnRequest Images the session featured marketers: Chris Campau, Director Marketing Procurement at InterContinental Hotels; Stephen Campbell, Director, Print Production at HBO and Alma McClain-Williams, Group Manager, Marketing Procurement at Microsoft.

All 4 speakers gave further insights into the sometimes complicated relationship between marketing and procurement and presented examples of how the 2 sides can work together successfully to achieve great business outcomes.

The presentation slides are available via the ISM website, but I thought I'd highlight some of the key messages from the speakers:

Marketing and Procurement can collaborate to:

* Optimize creative output and brand management

* Increase ROI

* Improve trust and transparency in the Marketing-Procurement relationship

* Manage better agency relationships

* Optimized agency rosters and agency utilization

Marketing and Procurement need to understand their roles in the partnership, eg:
* Marketing should retain control of agency selection

* Understand that marketing resources are not commodities

* It isn't always about the lowest price - agencies are paid to deliver a creative product which gives brands a competitive advantage

Procurement can add significant value to the marketing department, eg:

InterContinental's procurement team helped to improve the agency selection process and ran an innovative sourcing process to:
* Deliver cost savings

* Improve agency relationships and

* Improve delivery of key  tangibles

HBO created a Interdivisional Collaboration Vendor List and Electronic Buying Tool which:
* Improved control of print buying processes and led to better creative outcomes, including greater consistency in the quality of campaign materials

* Rationalised the print vendors from 374 in 2000 to 64 in 2010

* Led to saving of $77M 

Microsoft created a partnership between Global Procurement, Agency Operations and Digital marketing experts to address growing complexities in managing digital assets.

The initiative:
* Created a rich, digital supply base which met the needs of 90% of business units requirements

* Streamlined processes and improved agency selection

* Increased ROI

These 3 case studies provide further evidence that Marketing and Procurement can indeed collaborate to deliver better business outcomes, particularly when they understand their respective roles.

Author: VJ Ratnam, Decideware