B2B/B2C online strategy and enterprise eBusiness blog

Earlier this year, the Amerock Cabinet Hardware brand within our corporation was merged into our business unit already consisting of Levolor and Kirsch to create a combined Global Business Unit called “Decor”. The Decor Business Unit rolls up under the Home and Family Group of Newell Rubbermaid as outlined here.

What’s exposed when businesses merge

Previously, Amerock was grouped under a different Global Business Unit and run independently of operations at Levolor and Kirsch. The merging of these business units has presented an interesting challenge from a website strategy perspective. The challenges are not unique to us and the purpose of this post is to not outline the specific challenges we faced but rather to focus on the high-level areas that mergers and acquisitions will eventually uncover:

Business processes, software platforms, job responsibilities, and online strategy must adapt to the new environment.

Enterprise E-Business must be scalable

I am fortunate to manage a team of people who are eager to take on new challenges and responsibilities. What we quickly discovered as it related to our Online Platform was that it had all been built around a single business (blinds & shades). This meant some of the software was specific to business processes unique to Levolor and Kirsch but more specifically, our business processes were very tied to Levolor and Kirsch.

When Amerock was infused into the mix, we had to re-engineer several areas (listed below). I won’t go into how we modified these processes but at a high level, these were the core areas impacted:

Enterprise E-Business must function on repeatable processes

I cannot stress this enough particularly in the past few years in working in a Fortune 500 environment after coming from a small business of 20-25 employees. The enterprise is too massive for any one person to “know it all” so processes must be rigid, repeatable, with good people employed to manage through the processes and modify the processes when they identify deficiencies.

Tribal knowledge is acceptable in small business and is what enables small business to be agile. Tribal knowledge contaminates the enterprise, especially in the E-business arena. If an enterprise process cannot be repeated by more than one person without significant “hand holding,” then it is not a repeatable process. A merger or acquisition will quickly expose deficiencies in processes.

Scalable, repeatable processes does NOT equal inflexible online experience

Perhaps one area where IT folks get it wrong most often is deploying a scalable, repeatable process that limits creativity (particularly as it relates to an online experience). Scalable and repeatable processes must inherently have a mechanism for dealing with unique business requirements and the ongoing management of these “exceptions.” This is all the more reason why the E-Business/IT group needs a seat at the (business strategy) table. Without knowing the direction of the business, it is impossible to anticipate every possible scenario and build scalable, repeatable processes that will last.

MediaBuyerPlanner reports ”Only about 55 percent of search marketers integrate their search efforts with offline marketing efforts; the other 45 percent make no effort at integrating SEM (Search Engine Marketing) with offline initiatives, according to a new study by iProspect and JupiterResearch.”

You may have an SEM management gap

The above article claims budgetary and resource concerns. I think the bigger picture is one of the following scenarios that many marketing organizations face:

1. Marketing, being resourced constrained, probably pawns this off as an “IT project” because it involves technology.
2. Marketing has assigned SEM efforts to a vendor specializing in SEM and no other marketing initiatives.

Scenario #1: SEM lives in IT

I can understand why SEM has traditionally been an “IT responsibility” because SEM in large part, is still a rather large mystery to marketers. They don’t understand the rules of the game and the execution of your organization’s SEM campaigns requires a fundamental knowledge of your website and the visitors of your website. It’s commonplace that a marketing communications department, who handles traditional print and television advertising, may not be the resident experts on web strategy and design. It’s easy to pass SEM off to IT — because they handle “the technical stuff.”

Scenario #2: SEM execution lives with an outside firm

There are many companies providing SEM services and not surprisingly, these companies are technical in nature and not traditional direct-marketers. Those that are direct marketers are generally small and have a localized client base, making it hard for them to penetrate the mold of Fortune 500 companies. Those that are technical may have a great technology to sell, but lack the marketing savviness of a direct marketing firm to truly bring SEM the return on investment it demands — resulting in poorly performing SEM campaigns. This leads to the disconnect in online and offline marketing mentioned in the above MediaBuyerPlanner report.

How do you close the SEM knowledge gap? Who should manage SEM?

SEM “belongs” in marketing and should be on the radar of anyone executing any outbound marketing and awareness campaigns (email, direct mail, or otherwise). “Belonging in marketing” and “being executed by marketing” are two different things. From marketing communications, to product marketing managers, to channel marketing, each group has their own functional needs/goals for SEM. Establishing a governing body to ensure the proper SEM techniques and optimization are in place is recommended — but simultaneously avoiding the bureaucracy that’s often accompanied by “governing committees.”

A good place? The web experience/usability group within your organization. SEM may be funded by marketing while the governing body and “gatekeeper” for SEM can be facilitated through the people who know your site inside and out and intimately understand the experience an end-user desires when arriving at the landing pages on your site via an ad. After all, not much ends up on the site that doesn’t pass the approval of this group. Any campaigns directing traffic to the site are right up the alley of a usability professional.