The Number One Complaint! Top Ten Demand Generation FAILS (Part 8)

Our modern word project derives from the Latin projectum which means “to throw something forward.” Sometimes that gets actualized as “throwing something over the fence.” Which does not really hold to the original meaning of the word.

More often than not, when projects do not get completed on time, on budget and of the expected quality, we can trace the root cause back to a deliverable that got thrown over the fence, usually too little, too late. Copy was a week late. Copy was a week late and full of errors and had to be re-written. Creative left out a critical CTA. Somebody forgot to run the finished document past legal. You probably have your own “favorite.”

While the components are all different, the root cause is consistent: failure to deliver components on time and to specifications. As a demand gen practitioner, you are at the end of the line, counting on campaign components delivered on time and to specifications. Your job requires the assembly of these “finished” parts into the executable campaign, ready for public consumption. In {Demand Gen Brief} we have often referred to demand gen as a “marketing factory” and this makes a great analogy. If you were the automobile final assembly plant, putting together all of the pieces built elsewhere and delivered to your plant, you would have a 100% expectation that these delivered parts would be built to spec, and be there when you needed them. Imagine how well your assembly line would execute if the engine delivery showed up a week late, or if the seats arrived without upholstery. Would you be expected to just “bolt it all together” and ship it out? I can only wish that were a rhetorical question.

We understand the problem (only too well, I suspect). Fortunately, the solution is really pretty straightforward: formal project management. And by “project management” I mean a systematic method for managing projects, not yet another software tool you need to buy and learn. The complexity of your project management (PM) system should reflect the complexity of your campaign execution process. The more resources, disciplines and project components required to build the campaign assets, the more complex your project management needs to be. There are definitely a few essentials any formal PM system needs to be successful.

Timeline
Everyone involved in the project needs to understand the timeline. In virtually every case, the major timeline needs to be broken down into component timelines. Start with campaign deployment date and work backwards. To understand the individual task timelines, start asking questions to the responsible stakeholders. These questions apply to every component task, and will help you determine how to stack up your tasks into a complete timeline.

1.     How long does the task take to complete?

2.     What has to be completed before you can start this task (dependency)?

3.     What external resources do you need to accomplish this task?

4.     Where does your finished task product go when you are complete?

5.     How will you transmit the completed work product?

A few tips you will want to apply here: start building your timelines in number of days, not pinned to calendar dates. You will want those tasks in both number of days (which reflects backlog) and number of hours (which represents the actual work effort required). These will come in handy in the future when you want to see how long it took to actually complete each task compared to the estimated time. Understanding these will help you better estimate in the future, and may help prioritize those backlogs!

Responsibilities
Everyone assumes they know who is responsible for what, but on those occasions where there is ambiguity around task responsibility, it is a recipe for disaster. Put a name or department name on every single task on your timeline. Make sure the responsible party or department head is aware of that responsibility. In addition, responsible parties need to understand any downstream dependencies, so the effects of on-time delivery are completely understood. The time to discuss responsibility is prior to beginning the project, not when tasks are due.

Specifications and Standards

This is another area where assumptions can quickly run a project off the rails. Make sure every responsible party understands what his or her deliverable is. In most cases, there should be standards or specifications for the deliverable. Those standards can be very simple, such as:

Email copy will be delivered in a Word document of no more than 200 words in length. All copy will be free of errors, grammatically correct and all external references must be validated. A double line feed will indicate paragraph breaks. Any links from within the copy will be highlighted by blue text and underlined. All link URLs must be fully qualified. All copy must be approved by legal prior to submission. Include the words “FINAL COPY” in the header of the document in 24 pt. RED font.

This single paragraph leaves little to the imagination about what final, submitted copy needs to look like.

Kickoff Meeting
While nobody wants to attend yet another meeting, project kickoff meetings will prove to be one of the most valuable meetings you will have on your calendar. As you have more of these, they will become very efficient and stakeholders will come more and more prepared to answer your questions and establish timelines. To make these meetings effective, you need to properly prepare, which will include some level of project breakdown. Otherwise, you won’t know which stakeholders to invite, and nothing stalls a kickoff meeting like, “Where’s Sally? She has to provide the copy for the Purple Chrome Widgets emails.” You should also include your project sponsor at this meeting. If a critical obstacle is encountered in this meeting, the sponsor needs to be aware and, if possible, provide direction on potential solutions. Your kickoff meeting agenda will vary, but here’s a good start.

1.     Project definition, stated objectives and success metrics

2.     Committed deadlines (this project deploys when?)

3.     Defined component parts (12 email nurture program with program logic)

4.     Stakeholder weigh-in on the five timeline questions.

5.     Timeline conflict resolution

6.     Commitments from stakeholders (everyone leaves committed to the timeline)

While this blog is not intended to be a comprehensive thesis on project management, or how to implement project management in your demand center organization, I hope it give you a good start in that direction. There are a number of great PM resources available online, such as:

www.projectmanagement.com

www.pmi.org

www.projectsatwork.com

Don’t let your lack of project management certification of experience inhibit you from instituting basic project management in your demand center organization. Even basic management will reduce inconsistency, improve timeliness and reduce errors. Any of these improvements will likely reduce the #1 complaint!

Notes:

Consistently ask the five timeline questions when building a project plan.

Make sure everyone understands who is responsible for what.

Specifications and standards reduce errors and improve timely delivery.

Project kickoff meetings will save you time and headache!

Now that you’ve got your project management ducks in a row, and are executing those campaigns efficiently and effectively, you know the next question is coming. How did my campaign do? Do at what? Opens? Clicks? Dancing the jig? The time to understand reporting and metrics requirements is before the Campaign is designed. Not after the data is collected and is missing the three critical metrics you needed to measure. This leads to Demand Gen FAIL number 8: Ex Post Facto Reporting!

Top Ten Demand Generation FAILS (Part 7) Testing One, Two, Three!

We like to associate the term “rocket scientist” with really smart people who accomplish amazing things. But without well-executed QA, even rocket scientists can make really dumb mistakes. Like with the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998.

Due to a miscalculation in payload distribution and a mismatched measurement system between different engineering groups, the thrusters produced more than 4x the necessary thrust. This resulted in a $320MM trash heap orbiting Mars (or so we think – nobody really know). My point? If NASA rocket scientists need active Quality Assurance, so does your Demand Center.

First, let’s define Quality Assurance (QA). Without a clear definition, we will all have a slightly different view of the subject. According to the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Quality Assurance is defined as: The planned and systematic activities implemented in a quality system so that quality requirements for a product or service will be fulfilled. Now that we understand the definition, let’s look at some hallmarks of good QA in a Demand Center organization.

Hallmark #1: Culture of Quality
Is quality appreciated and held in high regard throughout your organization? If so, many of the hallmarks below will seem second nature. A culture of quality tends to permeate all departments within an organization, and affects the output of everything produced. “Good enough” is replaced by “Does it meet [insert your company name here] standards.” Do you immediately, and without question, re-work or reject anything that does not meet up to these standards? If so, you have a culture of quality. If you respect time or price over quality, you likely do not have a culture of quality.

Hallmark #2: Quality is visible everywhere all the time
Examples of quality work are on display. Awards are on display. Your co-workers talk about quality and it is the first question asked when a new idea is discussed. If your new ideas are initially met with “how fast” or “how cheaply” can the new idea be produced, you likely do not have a culture of quality. (Note: Even in a culture of quality, speed and price are important subjects, but they tend to NOT be the highest priority and are not the first question asked.)

Hallmark #3: There are defined standards and processes for quality
Notice this did not say “defined standards and processes for quality assurance.” If we go back to our definition above, quality assurance is not just a department or a check tacked on to the end of a project. That is a quality control step. Quality assurance is baked into the entire process, making sure that quality is produced and maintained in the entire production process. Whether it is a Rolls Royce engine or a six-touch nurture campaign, quality needs to be baked into the entire process to ensure that the quality control step is merely an affirmation of the quality already built into the end product. If you don’t have defined processes and standards or QA is a step in the process, you likely do not have a culture of quality.

Hallmark #4: Senior management is actively involved in quality
Quality is not so much dictated as it is lived. If senior management gives lip service to quality in town hall meetings and weekly newsletters, but every question concerning development or manufacturing concerns time or money, you definitely do not have a culture of quality.

Let’s view this from the perspective of a well-known, high-quality brand, like Rolls Royce. Imagine the meeting where engineers have an idea for a new, fuel-efficient engine. Does the meeting start with “How cheaply can we build it?” Or does it begin with, “Will this engine live up to the standards of a Rolls Royce?”

Key to delivering consistently high-quality programs, content and delivery mechanisms is creating a culture and process that promotes quality. This may force pushing back on internal clients when they fail to meet deadlines – one of the most difficult  process failures to navigate. But failure to build quality into every step of your production process leads to Demand Gen FAIL number 7: Testing, One, Two, Three.

Notes:

Quality Assurance is not a department or the final step in your delivery process.

Hallmark #1 of a high quality Demand Center is a pervasive culture of quality.

Speaking of client failure to deliver project components on time, in next week’s edition of {Demand Gen Brief} we will dig into that issue. It is by far the most common complaint I hear from demand centers concerning production timelines, and we’ll look into ways to avoid that situation in Demand Gen FAIL number 8: The Number One Complaint!

Is innovation killing innovation?

There are a million blogs, posts and comments about innovation nowadays. In fact, it seems innovation has become an end in itself - innovation for the sake of innovation. But is that a good thing, or is "innovation" actually killing innovation?

In the quest to find the next disruptive game changer, are we innovating things that require no innovation? Like a talking refrigerator? My refrigerator already has an LED display panel that tells me when to change, and even when to order, a new filter. I can only imagine a pleasant dinner with my wife being interrupted by Siri demanding that I change the filter in my refrigerator. Not the kind of "innovation" I want.

Granted, there are some real innovators like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk who are really looking beyond the horizon at products nobody knows about today, but everyone will want tomorrow. There is a real and valid place for innovation, but if everything is "innovative" then nothing is really innovative.

In a bigger sense, are we chasing innovation at the expense of building well what we already build? Are we gambling the incremental changes that make our products and services a little better every day for the potential game-changer that will "revolutionize" the industry? How much revolutionizing do we actually need, versus evolution that build on already-solid foundations?

Don't get me wrong, I am 100% behind true innovation. I just hate to see artificial innovation replace solid, incremental gains that turn good products and services into great ones.

Top Ten Demand Generation FAILS (Part 6) Lumpy Pancake Batter

As you anxiously take the first bite of your stack of hot buttermilk pancakes, dripping with maple syrup, you notice that dusty, dry sensation. The light, fluffy texture is interrupted by a giant glob of unmixed, uncooked flour, salt and baking powder. Lumpy pancake batter has ruined your breakfast.

What caused the lumps in the batter? Inconsistency. The inconsistency was caused by shortcutting the mixing process. Your grandma probably insisted you mix your batter 200 strokes. You probably use an electric mixer. But whether you are building your biceps with a wooden spoon or decorating your backsplash with an electric mixer, shortcut those 200 strokes and you get lumpy batter. And how many lumps does it take to put a ding in your otherwise glorious breakfast? That’s right, just one.

Let’s see how your Demand Center might suffer from lumpy batter. Even if you have properly assessed and documented your process and tailored an infrastructure and organization to work optimally in that process, shortcuts lead to lumps. We’ve all seen them and we’ve all experienced the outcome, either massive operational headaches or deployment mistakes. It’s a simple result of the Compound Delay Effect.

Under normal operations, a campaign deployment process looks something like this:

When early-stage tasks get delayed, the effect is compounded into later stages. Not only is there a delay in beginning the task itself, there are additional delays caused by re-scheduling. The task itself becomes larger because of the start/stop activities added to the mix. And resources are often shuffled to accommodate, meaning originally scheduled resources might not be available and other – and perhaps less ideal – resources are substituted. The compound result becomes distorted and looks more like this:

 

As any Project Manager will tell you, there are only two ways to combat this Compound Delay Effect: move the timeline or add more resources. Sometimes there are no additional resources and sometimes there is a dependency that prevents the useful addition of resources, even if they were available. Other times, the timeline is rigid and tied to an external event that cannot be moved (like a national trade show). Therein lies the great temptation to shortcut the process, leading to lumpy batter.

Nobody wants to shortcut the process. It is sometimes inevitable. When it becomes the norm, you have a real operational problem. Let’s look at a few outcomes, underlying causes and potential solutions.

1.     We’re not quite sure whether or not the project is on schedule, but we think so.

Projects are consistently delivered behind schedule and every deadline is a mad rush to the finish, resembling a college “all-nighter” prior to a big test.

Build project management into your process. Yesterday. If you have in-house PM expertise, figure out how to utilize it. If you need to hire project managers, do it. They will help you build realistic project plans that include all the dependencies, hand-offs and all those tasks you never thought to include in a project plan.

2.     QA is constantly seen as a “roadblock” to completion.

More than likely, QA is not the roadblock but, as the final step in the process, is receiving its assets too late to practically make deadlines.

QA should be considered an integral step in every process. As with any project plan, sufficient time and resources should be assigned. This plan should include time for the normal-case scenario, not the best-case, which is most often the plan. This means plan for mistakes and re-work. Because you know that is going to happen. If your assets were delivered mistake-free every time, you wouldn’t need QA at all.

3.     Tasks keep falling through the cracks.

You consistently think you are nearing completion, only to find out some details (or critical component) has not been completed. After much shouting and finger-pointing, somebody bribes some resources with beer and pizza to work after-hours to cobble together something you can pass off as a deliverable.

This is not an operational plan. Assuming you started with a project plan listing all of the tasks and associated deliverables, somebody still needs to be paying attention. Project Managers are responsible for making sure tasks are completed on time and in the proper sequence, handoffs are made and deliverables are delivered.

According to dictionary.com, the primary definition of inconsistent is “Lacking in harmony between the different parts or elements; self-contradictory.” Like lumpy pancake batter. Or Demand Center processes that don’t always follow process.

Assuming these solutions sound preferable to the alternative, inconsistent chaos, we should begin to see a pattern in the solutions. Project management helps achieve the discipline necessary to keep our execution consistent with our defined process. Failure to consistently manage our projects leads to Demand Gen FAIL number 6: Lumpy Pancake Batter.

Notes:

Your defined Demand Center processes must be consistently followed in the execution of each and every Campaign. Even small variances can lead to poor execution and a negative user experience.

Formal Project Management will help you stay on course and consistently execute according to plan. Implement some form of project management into your system.

In next week’s edition, we will look at Demand Generation FAIL number 7: Testing, 1,2 3! How to make sure Quality Assurance is actually assuring quality.

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).