Rattled Chains of Command

Most companies don't have a handle on their marketing supply chain, and that's a costly mistake, according to a new study from the CMO Council.

“No one seems to truly understand the totality of the supply chain, and that's a huge area of inefficiency,” says Liz Miller, vice president of programs and operations for the CMO Council. “[Companies] need to understand how all of the individual aspects connect. Then they can streamline their budgets and redeploy those dollars into higher yield demand generation programs that will actually improve the bottom line.”

The study, sponsored by NVISION, showed that only about a quarter of marketers are tracking obsolescence of marketing materials. And those who do are reporting rates as high as 27%.

“That's a huge number,” says Miller. “When you start translating that into dollars, you realize you need to start paying attention.”

One problem may be that the right people aren't involved in the process, she notes. When asked who owns responsibility for the supply chain in their organization, the usual suspects came up — vice presidents of marketing, CMOs, brand managers, buyers, purchasing agents, etc.

“But who wasn't included?” says Miller. “Warehousing, operations — the people who are actually storing and moving the materials.”

Some marketers in the study said they estimated their company could be dealing with up to 60 vendors for consumables related to sales, events and point-of-sale. This is a problem, as it means companies aren't leveraging efficiencies of scale.

“Many companies have a legacy of personal relationships that drive their ordering and procurement process, so [various departments] are all using different print vendors,” Miller notes. “If you consolidated that, you'd be saving on shipping, as well as print and production.”

For more on the CMO Council survey, go to http://chiefmarketer.com/technology/1120-supply-chain.

TO WHAT DEGREE ARE YOUR MARKETING SUPPLIER RESOURCES INTEGRATED?

Well organized and globally aligned	13%
Continuously improving supplier management	46%
Fairly disjointed, isolated on functional levels	30%
Poorly linked, controlled and aligned	8%
Not sure	3%

HAVE YOU EVER DONE A COMPREHENSIVE AUDIT OF YOUR SUPPLY CHAIN COSTS AND PROCESSES?

Yes	25%
No	63%
Do not know	12%

Source: CMO Council