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[QualitiAmo - Stefania]

Su Npost potete leggere aun articolo dal titolo: "Applying Six Sigma to Marketing to Grow Revenue".

Questa è la versione tradotta in italiano con il traduttore automatico di Google.

As someone who worked for Motorola from the early 80s until the late mid-90s I had an opportunity to be a part of the Six Sigma Era. Even though Six Sigma as a measurement standard originated in the 1920s, Motorola is credited with applying the methodologies and coining the term “Six Sigma.” The philosophy behind the Six Sigma approach is if you can reduce process variation, you can improve organizational effectiveness and efficiencies. According to General Electric (GE)–an early adopter of the program–Six Sigma is a “disciplined methodology of defining, measuring, analyzing, improving and controlling the quality in every one of the company’s products, processes and transactions–with the ultimate goal of virtually eliminating all defects.” Originally used to improve engineering and manufacturing, the Six Sigma approach has expanded to include all aspects of organizational performance, including marketing.

Six Sigma enables companies to improve the marketing’s strategic, tactical and operational processes as a way to enhance the top line to drive revenue. By applying Six Sigma to marketing you can develop a lean efficient marketing workflow, identify leading indicators of growth and become proactive about performance improvement. Measurement of performance is one of the five fundamental phases in the Six Sigma methodology. Once you begin measuring marketing performance, you can begin to make modifications and improvements. Six Sigma provides both a methodology for process improvement and a way to prove its value.

One of the key methodologies associated with Six Sigma is DMAIC. DMAIC is used to improve existing business processes. DMAIC includes five steps: define roles, goals, and deliverables consistent with customer demands and the organization’s strategy; measure current performance and processes, and collect relevant data for future comparison and improvement, analyze the relationship and causality factors; improve the process to eliminate defects; and control and correct any variances before they result in defects and thereby improve performance. The five steps for DMADV include: define the goals of the design activity, measure and identify the critical quality, product/process capabilities, analyze to develop and design alternatives to determine the best design, design the process and verify the design. By using the methodology you can create a data-driven, systematic approach to solving business problems that will have a positive impact on customers.

Let’s consider how we can apply the DMAIC process to marketing to grow revenue.

1. Define: The role of marketing is to create predictable streams of revenue growth by enabling the organization to profitably identify and secure new customers, and to keep and grow the value of these customers. Therefore, a key ingredient in this step is for marketing to establish goals and deliverables designed to achieve these three outcomes. To fully realize these three outcomes, the various marketing functions will need to be integrated to create a comprehensive and integrated workflow process. This integrated workflow process will then need to be mapped. Once these three elements are completed, new metrics that tie marketing to the business outcomes must be defined and standardized across the marketing organization for the purpose of providing insight into performance and facilitating strategic decisions.

2. Measure: There is no escaping the fact that to be successful in measurement marketing will need data. Without data, performance cannot be measured and improvements cannot be made. The first step in measuring and improving performance is to determine what data exists, where that data is, what data is needed, and how to obtain the data. Customer purchase activity, marketing program results and conversion rates, actual costs for programs and people, lead quality data and lead cost, win/loss ratios, and defections that occur in the buying process are examples of some of the data that will be needed. Once the metrics are defined, the team should use the data to establish a baseline of past expense and performance.

The metrics should be defined not just in terms of the cost but also in terms of how these investments contributed to the company’s ability to achieve its goals and generate profitable revenue. The marketing metrics are contingent upon knowing the business outcomes. It is imperative that the business outcomes be clarified and specified before the marketing metrics are established. Business outcomes for example may be related to the specific number of customers to be acquired and at what cost, the specific rate of customer acquisition, the specific lifetime value of a customer, customer loyalty, and specifically how quickly customers adopt new products. By knowing the business outcomes, marketing knows what objectives it needs to achieve and within what parameters. Marketing can now establish the metrics, the performance targets and processes, and measure its performance. Tying marketing metrics to business outcomes forces marketing to transform from a transactional function to a strategic contributor.

3. Analyze: Simply measuring performance will not make it improve. Performance improvement results from deriving insight through the analysis of the data. By analyzing the data and understanding what it means, marketing can determine the degree of impact it is having on the organization, and redesign processes that will improve performance. Creating a dashboard of key business initiatives can help process the data and make it easier to visualize both the impact and opportunities for improvement. Analysis leads right into the improve step.

4. Improve: A performance-driven organization welcomes opportunities for improvement. The main purpose of applying Six Sigma to marketing is to determine how to improve performance and processes. Data analysis should result in valuable insights that generate possibilities for improvement. These possibilities for improvement can include enhancements in tools, systems, processes, and skills. Even though change is disruptive, developing new ways to approach the market enables the marketing organization to play a more strategic role.

5. Change and Control: Because marketing prides itself on its creativity, it has often sacrificed control. But the time has come for marketing to document its processes and best practices and to apply these consistently in order to optimize marketing execution.

Applying Six Sigma to marketing will increase marketing’s ability to deliver on market requirements, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing planning process, successfully manage marketing operations, provide transparency into marketing processes, and improve the collaboration between marketing and other groups within the business.
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Stefania - Staff di QualitiAmo

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