We’ve been reviewing recently our most successful lead management and lead nurturing programmes, looking at what it took to make them successful and the key steps in setting them up. (For a view on the benefits these programmes have to offer, see this previous post on lead nurturing strategies/target benefits.)

Alongside a more detailed set of critical success factors, our review suggested 4 key attributes essential for creating lead management programmes (each then breaks down into several competence questions in a kick-off process):

1. Detailed knowledge of the business objectives and capabilities/needs of different teams in the business/external partners
2. Insight into target individuals, their typical needs and decision/purchase journeys
3. Expertise in the strategies, content, and hooks that drive forward the audience journeys
4. Working understanding of the technologies of lead management, nurturing and CRM (technology must not come first, but understanding the different capabilities of Eloqua vs Silverpop vs Oracle vs Marketo vs Aprimo vs Neolane vs Microsoft Dynamics vs Salesforce etc etc will ensure rapid time to value)

Only by balancing these 4 factors is it possible to take the 4 actions necessary to build the best performing programme (while these 4 are distinct and each have several sub-actions, they can’t be treated in isolation as each has an impact on the other):

1. Identify areas of potential for greatest business impact from lead management (and set the right targets/measures)
2. Correctly set the process and scoring for management/handover of different levels of opportunities and for management/improvement of ‘marketing’ data in the nurturing process
3. Design the right journeys, create enticing content (or ‘wrap’ existing content), identify appropriate triggers/personalisation opportunities
4. Select the best areas to launch the programme, implement rapidly and scale up appropriately

It would be interesting to hear if anyone has spotted any other headline factors responsible for lead management success…

IBM has claimed that analytics will be bigger than CRM and ERP combined, heralding a new era of “information led transformation”.

Interviewed by MyCustomer.com, Ovum analyst  Madan Sheina said “The company is now poised to funnel even more of its profits into BI and analytics over the coming years, anticipating that they will be bigger than the ERP market two decades prior – the tipping point being a shift from business automation to business optimisation.” The company’s main “information on demand” products centre around sales analytics, workforce performance and supply chain management.

Mycustomer.com quoted Gartner today, saying that “customer relationship management is too strategically important for enterprises to abandon projects in the recession. As the recession deepens, however, enterprises are looking to drive greater efficiency and lower the costs of their CRM projects.

“Gartner estimates that CRM spending in 2009 will not decline as dramatically as it did after 2000, but growth will be more moderate than in previous years. It forecasts that the European CRM software market will reach $3.5 billion (€2.4billion) in 2009, an increase of 4% from 2008.

“When placed in the context of ongoing negative growth in the UK economy, which many predict will last until Q3 2009 or beyond, those are impressive figures.” See the whole mycustomer article here.

Today Google launched Chrome, its new beta browser. Chrome is designed specifically to run applications rather than just display pages. As such, it’s ideal for running SaaS applications such as salesforce.com, sugar crm, SAP BusinessByDesign, Oracle CRM OnDemand etc.

Nicholas G Carr on his blog today argues that “the real goal of Chrome, embedded in [its] open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications.” The web as a computing platform continues its relentless march.

As SaaS gains increasing popularity, the way businesses are buying applications is changing. SaaS apps are proving easier and quicker to buy. The average business unit head is very comfortable with the web – it doesn’t hold the fear and pain of “going through IT” to get something done. If you can sign up for FT.com to get your news with the company credit card – why not a CRM tool too?

But the fact/illusion that you can simply “sign up over the internet” is having real impact on the decision-making cycles B2B marketers are used to. Sales cycles are shorter, traditional due diligence is being shortcut. Many more decisions are being made on the basis of politics, ambition, emotion and frustration. Often IT is being left out of SaaS purchase processes entirely.

Nick Booth’s article last week for Computer Weekly highlights a study by Gartner research which showed that 75% of all SaaS is bought by business unit managers, rather than IT managers. Gartner warns CIOs to get involved in the decision-making, saying: “It’s happening in your organisation anyway, whether you like it or not.”

All this adds up to interesting times ahead for B2B marketers. If browser technology is evolving to make applications easier to run and access to the latest software is a click away, what does that mean for our marketing efforts? Should we look to the publishing world or the gaming world for models? Is the SaaS subscriber model bringing a “throwaway” culture to organisational IT buying?

IT decision-making power is shifting rapidly, and the perception of organisational IT is changing with it. Take a good look at what it means for your programmes.