The dynamics of A-CRM AKA Analytical Marketing are going through a sea change. A whole lot of enterprises have started giving the due attention to leading Analytical CRM Solutions available in the market. However, it is a virgin territory to many organizations and they are quite vulnerable to fall for solutions with glossy skin and silky hair but with inadequate substance.

Enterprise that are giving serious thoughts to Analytical Marketing initiatives have to first rope in relevant teams, sit together, understand what are lacking in the existing process, elicit associated pain points and ensure a exhaustive list of what to be addressed is consented and slated. It is also very important to assign a senior executive to own the new venture. Senior as in in-depth understanding of marketing and dynamics of the enterprise that is scouting for a solution in addition to number of years experience in his/her profile.

When an enterprise manages to follow the aforesaid approached, the importance of data in such initiatives will stand out aloud. This would mean, solutions that are being short-listed for evaluation would have to have an innate ability to handle data management as part of the solution itself. Organizations that already have an investment on data management should ensure the short-listed solutions have the ability to leverage the best of such investments. Otherwise, the enterprise will end up investing in a solution that might appear to solve the problem, but only in short term.

It is important to remember there are a host of analytical marketing solutions in the market today. However, not all of them are comprehensive. In my understanding, most of the solutions might appear like good ones despite of inadequacies, but how far it would go? Well, your guess is as good as mine.

A few months down the implementation of such solutions, the unsophisticated users who were unaware of the nuances of Analytical Marketing architecture in the beginning will climb up the learning curve and feel handicapped for having invested in a solution and its inability to handle various tasks that are deemed to be handled.

So, as the first step ensure you have an environment that would feed in meaning full customer/product/transaction data to your analytical marketing solution. If such an environment is not available, its okay and we understand marketing cannot wait till the data reaches a pristine state.One does not have to deep dive in the nitigrities on data management, but has to ensure the short-listed solution have an ability to handle the data management efficiently. As an action point, ensure your list of evaluation parameters has a section on data management and thoroughly evaluate the solutions ability to handle the same.

Organizations that have invested in Data Management solution must clarify the short-listed solutions capability to leverage the best of such investments. Any vendor proposing work arounds or showcasing data management as no-so-important-item should be ignored from the short-list at the earliest.

In either case, please be informed it is not advisable to use the data as it exists today for Analytical Marketing initiatves.

In the world of Analytical Marketing, if you happen to sow garbage, you will only reap garbage and no amount of monsoon would help.