Top Ten Demand Generation FAILS (Part 5) This Building has Structural Issues

Have you ever been to the top of one of those Television towers or the Stratosphere in Las Vegas? These interesting structural designs seem to have a round building perched atop a very tall and very thin pole. What you can’t see is the very large concrete base buried below the surface, without which the entire structure would topple at the first puff of wind.

The same goes for a “structurally sound” Demand Center – much of the “structure” is invisible, below the surface, and absolutely necessary for proper function.

How sound is your demand center’s foundation? Since it is “invisible” how do you measure and keep track of its structural integrity? Let’s pretend for a moment that we’re engineers trying to determine the integrity of your foundation; how would we go about it?

As with any measurement, there are a few key characteristics we need to investigate. Let’s don our hard hats and dive in.

1.     Is the original design sound? Seems like a pretty good question. Does the plan reflect good engineering practices? Does it accommodate the needs of the building’s users with the correct infrastructure (Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing)? Do the specified structural components meet codes and standards?

These are all great parallels to your Demand Center structure. Is your Demand Center plan sound. (Do you even have a set of “blueprints” for your Demand Center infrastructure?) Does the infrastructure suit the needs of your internal clients in terms of its ability to support all of the various Campaign elements necessary for your marketing programs? Do the individual components, such as email engine, website integration, CRM integration and database meet up to industry best practices?

2.     Did the plan accurately consider the building site environment? Were climate, severe weather, seismic and geologic conditions adequately accounted for in the design? How were each of these conditions determined and documented?

To properly design a Demand Center infrastructure, you need to adequately assess your Center’s environment. This requires a thorough Business Process Review (BPR) to determine that actual business requirements you plan to meet. These are your climate histories and soil samples, upon which you can base good infrastructure design. Do you have a set of documented (and agreed upon by the business stakeholders) business processes and associated goals by which your success will be measured?

3.     Is the structure built according to plan? You might have designed a great building, but is it actually built according to those plans? Are the building components exactly as specified in the plan or were there substitutions? Are the as-built measurements precisely as specified in the plan?

When assessing Demand Center structures, the answer 99 times out of 100 is a resounding NO. The correct skill sets for specific roles could not be hired and there isn’t time or budget to properly train them. Specific software or plugins to maintain data hygiene are in next year’s budget. Platforms won’t support needed process or functions. Integrations between critical systems can’t happen because of lack of internal skills or budget to hire external vendors. Once very important caveat to note here: if you don’t begin with a detailed Demand Center blueprint, you cannot claim the infrastructure isn’t built according to plan. You’ve heard it a million times, but failing to plan is planning to fail.

4.     Have environmental factors changed since the building was built? Has increased local development altered the surrounding micro-climate? Have repeated severe weather events altered soil conditions or associated codes?

Has your operational environment changed since you implemented your Demand Center? Mergers, acquisitions and reorganizations will all have an effect on how you operate.  Personnel changes in key positions can affect your operations, changing SLAs or quantity expectations. In general, how has the landscape changed since you originally designed your Demand Center?

5.     Have use factors changed since the original design was created? Has increased use of electronic devices changed the average power consumption per occupant? Does the building structure cause problems with the increased use of wireless devices? Has modern interior office design affected occupant density, affecting dynamic and static structural loads?

Interesting how these very same factors can and should be affecting the way your Demand Center operates. Does your Demand Center design accommodate the increased use of wireless devices, both internally and externally? How does this affect your QA processes? Can you adapt to the ever-changing technology landscape to include multi-screen, location-based advertising and the Internet of Everything?

What’s your plan? Do you have a set of blueprints that adequately document this plan in sufficient detail to build it? There is zero chance that your business environment is going to remain static for the next two, three or five years, so you need to prepare to “remodel” in the future. In order to remodel, you need to have an accurately documented plan to form the basis for that remodel. Design. Document. Build. In that order. Failure to follow that simple, prescriptive process leads to Demand Gen FAIL number 5.

Notes:

Your Demand Center infrastructure is like a building, requiring the necessary design diligence and documentation (blueprint) to build, maintain and remodel it in the future.

When troubleshooting, it is impossible to determine where a system is not working properly without a design document against which you can compare the operating process. This wastes valuable time at (almost always) a critical time in  the production process.

In next week’s edition, we will look at Demand Generation FAIL number 6: Lumpy Pancake Batter. Because we all love inconsistency (not).