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Marketing Procurement has evolved from a basic administrative function to a strategic high-performance function essential for driving growth, efficiencies & returns. Inefficient workflows, often from legacy processes, can often hinder success.
In this guide, we explore solutions Marketing Procurement can implement across core marketing sourcing and contracting activities to achieve improved efficiencies & returns.
Efficiencies & Returns with an Effective Scope of Work
The scope of work maps out the services, deliverables, timelines and performance metrics you expect from your agencies upfront. It’s important that Procurement work closely with their Marketing colleagues to create a precise, detailed SOW as it improves marketing procurement efficiency by:
- Streamlining collaboration on scope requirements
- Supporting development of structured agency briefs
- Enabling comparisons and benchmarking of agency fees
- Creating standards for simpler reviews and monitoring
Leveraging benchmarking data to inform your scope elements will help deliver the highest efficiencies & returns. Ensuring your performance metrics are aligned to your KPIs makes for easier reporting, and clearer communications with your agencies so that everyone has visibility into the end goal and what they are working towards.
We highly recommend using a templated SOW to make comparing, tracking and reviewing a more streamlined process in itself. For example, our SOW template, which is part of the RightSpend system, ensures you can run efficient reports and assessments at the touch of a button.
Efficiencies & Returns with Data-Driven Request for Proposals
The RFP process is traditionally a huge drain on resources – taking an investment of time from both the brand and agency. Whilst an RFP is vital, it often feels like it is taking up time that could be better spent delivering a return on your business objectives.
Using a data-driven approach to your RFP can help you evaluate agencies more objectively and get better results much more efficiently.
It’s important to be clear as to the intention of the RFP to ensure it is the best use of resources and time. We often find clients are using an RFP exercise to simply check that their agencies remain competitive. In instances like this, the more effective solution would be to use a system like RightSpend to benchmark and assess each agency’s performance.
By analysing your agency’s performance in a procurement technology platform you can use the advanced algorithms to assess the contract value based on facts not perception. And this will save you and your agencies valuable time that can be better spent in delivering results.
If you do need an RFP, then using a system like RightSpend can still help you to save time, by assessing each agency’s proposal against the benchmark and ‘should cost’ to determine your shortlist, that can then be assessed based on soft facts, like the relationship and sentiment with that agency.
Efficiencies & Returns with regular agency reviews
Even when briefed effectively, agencies can often fall short of delivering – and often that can be down to ineffective communication. To streamline your process it’s key to have a clear and regular evaluation process.
We find that regular agency reviews can help deliver huge efficiencies & returns.
Part of your agency review should be looking at what was agreed in the contract and what was delivered. For instance, you may have agreed the agency can make a 10% profit margin on your project, but when you come to the agency review they are showing a 24% profit margin. You can then address the variance and potentially redistribute this into additional marketing campaign work.
Regular agency reviews also enable you to see which of your agency roster is delivering the best results and compare against benchmark. Carefully assessing this data can not only help drive substantial efficiencies & returns to your marketing procurement, but also inform your marketing strategy and agency partnership alliances.
Ongoing transparency and collaboration with your agencies motivates their performance whilst giving you the information you need to inform decisions and aid upcoming negotiations.
Efficiencies & Returns by Leveraging Data to Negotiate Optimal Contracts
Marketing Procurement can lack full visibility into benchmark marketing spend, agency margins, overheads which all can powerfully inform negotiations. We often see companies going into important contract negotiations with no data, and therefore are negotiating based on emotions and assumptions not facts.
Fact-based negotiations, backed by reliable industry data, yield fairer, performance-driven contracts, higher satisfaction and lower risk. Using a data-driven approach to your Marketing Procurement negotiations will make your Marketing dollars extend further – delivering advanced efficiencies & returns.
Overall, transforming your Marketing Procurement process from a manual and intuitive one to a streamlined, data-led process provides improved Marketing Procurement efficiencies & returns, enhancing your visibility in the business and increasing agency performance.
Optimising your Marketing Procurement process led by data is proven to deliver a significant return on investment.