Realizing Better, Faster Results

Today, Avanade’s marketing organization bears little resemblance to its predecessor, thanks to the program, the commitment and buy-in of our marketing team, and the support of the business leadership.

With our centralized, global approach, campaigns are brought to market faster and with better results. In fiscal year 2015, time to market for campaigns accelerated by three months over last year, and we’ve seen exponential year-over-year growth in our demand-related KPIs, including such measures as marketing’s impact on sales and its influence within the pipeline. In addition, we’ve seen an improvement in our effectiveness and are more closely aligned with sales.

The success of the program is attributed primarily to three factors:

1.    Global planning, local execution: The transformation program cut across the marketing organization – corporate and the field. We shifted our approach to doing as much as possible centrally to free up our field marketers to focus on clients, execution of marketing programs and campaigns, and supporting sales.

2.    Alignment with and support from the business: The program was always positioned in the context of Avanade’s overall business objectives with strong support from executive leadership.

3.    Art wrapped in technology: Our program recognizes the need for both the art and science of marketing. There is art in what we do; positioning, messaging, and having compelling content, clear writing and strong visual imagery. These are essential to effective marketing. But technology – specifically, data and analytics – plays a vital role as our marketing team now uses data to make better decisions.

Digital technology has changed client expectations, business opportunities and marketing. Our program is an example of how organizations are adapting marketing strategies to better harness digital technologies to empower people and improve communication, collaboration and innovation. Given the success of our program, we’re confident that with the right people, processes and tools, we’ll continue to advance as a world-class marketing organization with the ability to show our impact on business results.