Sixty Seconds on Technology

We asked some people who should know for some views on the potential, or the perils, of technology – in just two or three hundred words
Marketing relationships
Financial services is a process-oriented sector that is traditionally an early adopter of technology, particularly enterprise software. For example, the effective deployment of customer relationship management (CRM) has been a key driver in increasing the relevance of the marketing message around products and services and improving customer service by building more meaningful and consistent relationships. In theory at least!
In reality, the positive experience has taken slightly longer to realize, as a consequence of needing to get other parts of the departmental enterprise better aligned. One such department is marketing.
Financial services firms now have increasingly customer-centric strategies, with more complex and demanding marketing processes, and marketing departments have to support this with less resource than ever before, and under the watchful eye of the regulator. Marketing resource management (MRM) solutions help to ensure that the available resources are best used, both inside and outside the organization, through the application of consistent strategy and process automation (reducing waste and speeding up delivery); and the provision of the critical measurement capability that has been difficult to deliver in the past. And MRM seems to be catching on. According to Gartner, it is already the fastest growing segment within CRM, and could be used in two-thirds of all CRM initiatives in Global 1000 companies by 2010, as they seek competitive advantage from a nimbler, more integrated and flexible marketing function.
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