Drivers for SOA
IT management of business processes is under increasing pressure from several directions; business processes are becoming more complex and flexible, while at the same time the degree and breadth of process automation must be continually extended to maximize cost savings. And all that has to be achieved with an evolutionary approach, taking into account an existing landscape with numerous systems from different vendors, relying on different technologies, being owned and used by different people inside the company.
Today's IT answer to this challenge is a so-called service-oriented architecture based on Web services technology. Research and development in the SOA space is driven by academic and technical experts; while for most IT practitioners, SOA is just a new hype that may or may not one day become reality. Most companies remain in a waiting position, struggling the old way with growing challenges - choosing not to investigate the potential in SOAs. This situation leaves service and infrastructure architects on the software-vendor side in their ivory tower, while business and IT departments continue to argue. Instead of sharpening the saw, companies continue to work harder and harder with "classical" means of process integration to fulfill at least part of the requirements they are facing. As we will see, campaign management (CM) is a very typical business process in that respect.
Campaign Management Challenges SOA
Usually, CM spans several components that cover different sets of functionalities such as planning and budgeting, segmentation and analysis, customer contact channels and - don't forget - supply chain and fulfillment. Most of the underlying software systems are either poorly connected or not connected at all. Many of them don't "belong" to the marketing department; some not even to the company, as CM has several "exits" to external service providers. A frequent example is the mailing house that takes care of sending out direct mail campaigns. Similarly, outsourcing is found for other contact channels such as call centers. But external partners also support CM by providing market data or address lists or by managing analytical aspects such as segmentation, forecasting and response prediction for the company.
CM often involves more than just campaign managers. CM affects a multitude of people inside and outside the company, many of them subject-matter experts either within a respective business area, an adjoining application/tool or some process step. Examples for other roles could be database marketer, marketing assistant, interaction center manager and interaction center agent. Most of these users contribute in several stages of CM and work, often utilizing multiple software applications to do so. Given the diversity of people and disconnected systems, tracking the status of campaigns usually takes a lot of personal communication - as the information from disparate areas lacks centralization that otherwise would enable everyone a consolidated view.
This disparity in information makes CM an ideal candidate for a portal solution where a variety of information services can be plugged together based on an individual's role and needs.
CM is not a stereotype process that is simply repeated the same way, over and over again. While there are common patterns such as seasonally repeated campaigns, there are usually numerous changes to a campaign at each iteration. In some cases, campaigns may even be changed midstream. Multiwave campaigns are no longer a visionary idea.
Why is there this need for flexibility in CM? There may be internal motivations to change the CM process, such as reducing cost by replacing an expensive service partner with a cheaper one. However, the major and more fundamental reason for changing requirements is that the CM process is targeted against the outside world, trying to influence customer behavior. Being outward-facing, CM is receptive to the many changes happening in markets, consumer behavior, technologies and legislation. Last, but not least, competitors do what they want and not what you wish. As a result, the successful campaign from yesterday may not have any effect today and may even end up being a disaster tomorrow. This is not just true for CM - many other CRM processes show a similar dependency for the same reason: being influenced by external factors that are not controlled by the enterprise.
Campaign Management - A Process Driven by Information
CM is still, in many respects, a manual process with a lot of replication of data by flat file or cut and paste. Integration and automation are still far from being a reality. However, CM actually has a high demand for information integration in nearly all phases. During preparation of a campaign, data about markets and customers as well as results from previous campaigns are needed in order to tailor offerings and target groups appropriately and to predict success and demand. Later on, customer reactions coming in through diverse channels such as sales orders, mail replies or other types of responses have to be collected, interpreted and causally related to the campaign. In multiwave campaigns, this information is then directly used for the next activities with the customer.
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