Decideware News

Decideware is featured in the latest edition of the ANA's SmartBrief on Marketing Leadership.

Decideware's Production Manager is the newest tool in the Agency Lifecyle Platform.

Built with input from a number of large advertisers including members of the ANA, Production Manager solves the critical issue facing advertising production managers who need to collect and assess data to optimise their production spend.

Without the right data, production managers just can't make good decisions.

With the right data, they can make informed decisions about suppliers, investments, de-coupling and re-coupling.

 The new ANA Thought Leadership magazine features 2 new articles from Decideware.

"Similar But Different, the Unique Challenges of Marketing Procurement" by Richard Benyon explores the key similarities between Marketing Procurement and Procurement – and argues that while there are distinctions in the marketing environment there are tools and techniques that can be successfully applied across both business environments.

"Making the Most of Your Production Spend" also by Richard furthers the argument that value and not lowest cost should be the goal of successful production spend management, and that access to reliable, timely production spend data is necessary to allow reliable analyses.

This latest ANA Thought Leadership magazine is distributed to 10,000+ ANA members.

Find the magazine, here: 
http://staging4.texterity.com/ana-thoughtleadership/2014_issue_06?sub_id=4RvSoUH5lAKr#pg1

Decideware's newest whitepaper, "Marketing Procurement – Similar but Different" is now available to ANA members at the ANA Marketing Knowledge Center website: 

http://www.ana.net/miccategory/index/id/partner-content

This paper explains that while marketing is indeed a unique area of spend requiring specialist skills and techniques to be managed successfully, certain practices from other procurement disciplines can be applied - perhaps judiciously.

Decideware is one of five new strategic partners who will work to provide better advice and great insight to WFA members. The partners will also create research projects and events with the WFA to bring light to key issues that affect all multinationals marketers.

Decideware has launched an Agency Lifecycle Platform to offer clients a full-cycle of software solutions to better manage agency relations and performance.

The Platform offers tools, for

• Selecting a new agency
• Managing a scope of work program
• Managing a briefing program
• Running an evaluation program

Please let us know if we can provide background information and/or perhaps arrange an opportunity for a briefing. 

Today we launched our new Briefing Manager video to help explain what the tool does for major advertisers.

Essentially, agencies need good briefs to do great work but they often don't receive them. And that means the creative process can be frustrating and expensive.

Briefing Manager provides a tool that marketing teams can use to write great briefs more often and more easily.

Please find the Assignment and Creative Briefing video right here: 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LL75HqhEhxY

 In a very busy period since 1 January Decideware has competed a number of significant projects;

Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine, an international B2B publication that provides mission-critical editorial to address the issues and challenges of the supply chain, recently announced Decideware Director of Business Development, Steve Wales as one of the 2013 "Pros to Know."

"The efforts that a number of the industry's leading executives continue to take to improve their business's functionality and in turn, progress the global supply chain this was one of the main reasons we started the 'Pros to Know' awards in the first place," confirmed Barry Hochfelder, Editor, Supply a Demand Chain Executive.

Honoring the supply chain's best and brightest, Supply & Demand Chain Executive's "Pros to Know" include professionals proactively working to improve their business's functions in a number of categories including manufacturing and production output; procurement; logistics; risk mitigation strategies; sourcing; financial operations; packaging and distribution; transportation; and much more.

Now in its 13th year, the Supply & Demand Chain Executive "Pros to Know" awards recognize both ends of the supply chain. This includes honoring the "providers," which includes individuals from software firms, service providers, consultancies or academia who helped their supply chain clients or the supply chain community prepare to meet industry challenges. This also includes honoring the "practitioners," e.g., those supply chain executives who demonstrated leadership by managing risk in the supply chain; provided competitive advantage; and delivered value to the bottom line.

Issue 6 of the ANA's Spotlight Series brought to you by Decideware features two articles highlighting how advertisers can manage better agency performance.

The first, "Optimizing Agency Teams" describes how marketers can use agency collaboration software to ensure teams of agencies work together most effectively for the benefit of the brand.

See the ANA's Spotlight on Agency Management magazine here: 
http://www.ana-thoughtleadership.net/ana-thoughtleadership/2013_issue_6#pg1 

 Elevating the Role of Marketing Procurement – ANA Survey Results

The ANA's Procurement Taskforce conducted a survey of 113 marketing procurement executives at ANA member companies in December 2012 / January 2013 to better understand the metrics used to measure the success & contribution of the marketing procurement organisation.

The Report was released this month and we've summarised 2 of the key findings, below.

Decideware is, of course vitally interested in this subject area because our solutions address key areas for process improvement identified by the respondents and we align closely with the mission of the ANA Procurement Taskforce who's role is to: a. define and elevate the role of marketing procurement, and b. close the 'gaps' on the value of procurement between procurement and internal marketing as well as procurement and external agencies

The latest edition of the ANA's Thought Leadership magazine series features an article from Decideware discussing how marketing procurement professionals can deploy 3 key approaches to build value for their marketing colleagues.

Essentially, Procurement can work with Marketers, to:

1. Select the right agency 
   Ensuring the company is best able to utilize the agencies already known to it is a major benefit. An accessible and fully featured agency database allows the marketing procurement team to access a holistic view of their agencies' business information, capabilities and performance. This is turn, means a short-list of prospective agencies can be developed for any project with greater confidence based on deep internal knowledge.
2. Engage with the business 
   With the majority of marketers managing a fee based agency compensation method, a solid scope of work program can help to improve efficiencies in getting good work done, but it also allows the client team opportunities to benchmark costs and buy at the right price based on a record of actual spend data. Managing individual scopes is one thing, running a sophisticated scope of work program is another. A well constructed program underpinned by a custom designed technology offers very significant financials returns.
3. Track the performance of the agency 
   Tracking agency relationships, performance and scope data is essential if marketers want to compete at the highest levels. Providing regular feedback to every agency and marketing team provides everyone an opportunity to work at their very best.

The ANA's new Thought Leadership magazine is available, here: 
http://www.ana-thoughtleadership.net/ana-thoughtleadership/201206#pg1

We would like to thank Gartner Group for including Decideware in its latest "Cool Vendor in Marketing, 2012" report published April 3rd.