#Enterprisemarketing dinner at Ham Yard Hotel

#enterprisemarketing dinner at Ham Yard Hotel

Omobono’s latest discussion dinner with The Marketing Society brought together marketers from some of the biggest companies in the UK (and beyond). 

With contributions from BA, Accenture, BT Global Services, BUPA, Barclays and Vodafone it was a discussion which ranged widely, from the need for speed in the face of agile more competition, to marketing’s contribution to the sales process. But at its heart was one theme, which centred around key driver of business success at enterprise level: people.   

First up: the challenge of speed. Two approaches were discussed. Buying it in – via investment in firms outside the company who can move in a more agile fashion and deliver projects and programmes which the enterprise finds hard to match. Or setting up internal ‘agile working’ teams which bring together representatives from different disciplines to tackle a project and deliver it in time scales which dramatically reduce turnaround times. The remaining challenges are how to migrate learning from the former into the organisation and how to scale up the latter, particularly when many people in the organisation might be reluctant to shift behaviours.  

Which leads neatly to the second topic out of the blocks: the long tail. How to engage people within the company to address the critical drivers large enterprises need to succeed, be it digital transformation, motivational initiatives or simply international alignment. At the heart of this is the simple truth that staff split into A, B and C categories; where the A’s are the high achieving trailblazers and ambassadors, Bs the middle mass and Cs the disgruntled opposers. Top tip? Focus on the As and the Bs will follow.  Ignore the Cs – they’ll never come round but you can at least minimise their noise.  

Third up: the relationship with sales.  Do marketing teams lead or follow in creating discussions with customers? When they are closely aligned on a sector they seem to lead – the focus of their attention and passion about something specific enables them to provide valuable insights to share with customers and sales teams alike.  When they are more broadly focused - at broader business issues at C-suite level, or a secondary player to an ‘expert adviser’ such as in financial services, it’sharder for marketing to make a meaningful contribution to the discussion.  

And finally: the challenge of brands within brands. Even at enterprise level, customers can be very different in their needs, niches, sectors and behaviours. Understanding that via personas and reflecting that in both communications and in the stance and behaviour of the people fronting up to them is critical.
So an enterprise is after all, it seems, just a big group of people. Harnessing them is at the heart of what success should look like.

Read more from Fran Brosan here.

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