Accelerate Marketing's Time to Market with ServiceNow

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Managing Enterprise Marketing on the ServiceNow platform

About 2 years ago, we built and deployed a ServiceNow application for Field Marketing Activity planning within the ServiceNow EMEA Marketing organisation. I wrote about the first stage implementation here.

Since, the app was further developed to include more functionality around budget allocation, procurement, approval and workflows, and reporting, and continued to permeate the ServiceNow Field Marketing organisation globally. Today, all geographies plan in MAPapp, which allows us to pivot and visualize our investments against business units, target audiences, activity types and projected contribution to sales pipeline.

Project Portfolio Planning for Marketing

Over the last 2 years, we've invested heavily in building out the Project Portfolio Management capability of the ServiceNow Platform. Today, we are confident we can compete with best of breed PMO software suites.

Hence, after activity planning and budgeting, we can now start using the out of the box Project Portfolio Management module in the ServiceNow platform for Marketing Management. By adopting a single system of record and common way of working across our marketing department, we expect to get even more done with the available resources.

In April, the team will be trained on the inner workings of the ServiceNow PPM module (thank you, Faez Ahmed & team!).

General workflow for Marketing Activity Planning and Action

The general workflow will follow these steps:

1. A planned Marketing Activity is created in MAPapp and submitted for approval.
2. Management approves the activity and investment.
3. Upon approval, and from within MAPapp, the Marketing Manager triggers the Purchase Request Orders for the vendors listed in the MAPapp record, against the planned budgets.
4. The Purchase Requisition workflow automatically runs through our Procurement and Legal departments and eventually puts out the Purchase Order which are needed to commence the work.
5. Depending on the type of activity, the Marketing Manager initiates the work in the Product Portfolio Management suite and manages it there until completion. Since we have onboarded our main contacts within our strategic vendors as employees, we can include them into our workflows, projects, visual taskboards, connect chats and notification emails. They are part of the marketing team.
6. Once the work is done and signed off, the goods are formally received within the system, the vendors send their invoices, which are being approved and processed for payment following the standard Invoicing workflow, and actual costs are transferred back into the initial MAPapp record for post-activity "planned vs actual" cost analyses.
7. Within PPM, the costs are being reported as part of the Project Portfolio financial analyses.

This attempt at changing the way marketing works is just underway. It already spawned a host of questions and suggestions. I'll share some of them here, hoping to get some feedback from the Agile Marketing and PMO communities out there — both within ServiceNow and beyond.

QUESTION #1

Are there customers or partners out there who use ServiceNow PPM for Marketing? Send me a note, as I want to host and moderate a community conversation on this topic at some point.

Managing the Work of Marketing on ServiceNow

So how do we manage the work of marketing? Let's take a look at a classic demand generation setup and see how far we get in describing it from a PMO point of view.

Some observations

The smallest entity within the ServiceNow PPM module is the TASK, which designates the smallest unit of work. We have to think about what the smallest unit of work in marketing would be, in order to plan and manage the work at the right level of granularity.

A classic way of structuring Enterprise Demand Generation breaks the work down into 6 main buckets: Programs (or: Initiatives), Campaigns, Projects, Programs, and Activities.

• An "Initiative" (1) is mid- to long-term set of strategic programs, with a runtime of 3-5 years.
• A "Program" (2) is part of an "Initiative" and consists of a number of "Campaigns".
• A "Campaign" (3) is part of a "Program" and typically runs 6 to 12 months and is concerted sequence of integrated tactics or "Activities" under a common theme, like tradeshows, content marketing, Online content syndication and Inbound marketing, webinars, seminars, workshops, telemarketing et cetera.
• "Program" is in here twice, because we usually apply the term to both a number of related campaigns or projects, as well as for (4) a number of similar activities, like "the Webinar program" or "the Telemarketing program", with an assigned specialist manager overseeing all webinars or the entire Telemarketing investment for the GEO.
• The term "Activity" (5) are part of a "Campaign" and refers to a single activity, like a webinar, a seminar, a call blitz day et cetera. We usually tick off a to do list to get activities done from head to tail. Our "Activities" and the funds they take are currently planned in MAPapp, but executed using email and spreadsheets, so outside of the ServiceNow platform.
• "Project" (6) is not in the illustration, because it falls outside of the running business of demand generation planning and execution. We usually refer to a "Project" when we are investing to innovate; when we create and pilot a new campaign or a new tactic, develop a new type of content asset, test a new scoring model in marketing automation. If successful, the output of such projects is then further developed and eventually integrated in the running business of planning and executing generic campaigns and activities. The development of MAPapp is another great example of a "Project".

Mapping Marketing to PPM

Mapped to the structure provided in the ServiceNow Project Portfolio Management module, I expect the following management model to come out of our PPM training:

1. Initiative. Owner: Global Go To Market Manager. PMO system: Portfolio Management. PMO objective: Manage a mid- to long-term investment plan, keep an eye on progress vs objectives, add and retire programs, manage planned vs actual costs on initiative level.
2. Program. Owner: Global Program/Campaign Manager. PMO system: Portfolio Management. PMO objective: Manage a mid-term programmatic investment plans, keep an eye on progress vs objectives on program level, add, develop and retire programs, manage planned vs actual resources and costs. Report on program ROI and sales pipeline contribution.
3. Campaign. Owner: Geo/Field Campaign Manager. PMO system: Project Management, Waterfall planning. PMO objective: Manage short- to mid-term campaigns investment plans, keep an eye on progress vs objectives on campaign level, add, develop and retire campaigns, manage planned vs actual resources and costs. Report on campaign ROI and sales pipeline contribution.
4. Program. Owner: Geo Program Manager. PMO system: Portfolio Management. Waterfall planning. Visual Task Board Coordination per executed program activity. PMO objective: Manage a mid-term programs investment plans, keep an eye on progress vs objectives on program level, add, innovate and retire tactics, manage planned vs actual resources and costs. Report on program ROI and sales pipeline contribution.
5. Activity. Owner: Geo Program Manager or Field Marketing Manager. PMO system: Visual Task Board Coordination.
   PMO objective: Manage a short-term activity planning, coordinate resources and control assigned finds. Report on activity performance and interactions/MQLs delivered, share best practices and — down the line — sales pipeline contribution.
6. Project. Owner: Project Manager on global, geo or field level. PMO system: Agile Development: Stories, Sprints, Visual Task Boards for team coordination. PMO objective: Manage project investment plan and timeline, allocate resources and keep an eye on progress vs objectives. Manage planned vs actual resources and costs. Report on project success, opportunities to further improve, and assess whether output can be integrated into running business.

> Marketing Visual Task Board in ServiceNow — source: ServiceNow Elite Blog, Mike Kaufman.

Challenges

One the key challenges of implementing PPM for Marketing will be to manage each level of planning and execution at the right level in the platform, so that we gain maximum control and insight, but stay nimble and effective in delivering our programs to market. Our goal is to accelerate, not to slow the team down by forcing more admin on them.

The fact that the ServiceNow platform supports different PMO management models (Portfolio Management, waterfall planning, agile scrum planning) enables us to find the right system for Marketing at each level of planning and execution.

Look out for an update on this topic in about 2 months' time. Meanwhile, I'd appreciate any feedback and thoughts that could help me get this thing moving and done more effectively.

QUESTION #2

Given the setup of a classic Enterprise Demand Generation function and the way ServiceNow structures Project Portfolio Management; what is the best approach to Managing Demand Generation on the ServiceNow Platform?