Reports & Guides

WFA & Flock Associates’ report: Tech & Tools in Marketing Procurement

Download the report here

Opening with a comment from Simon Francis, Executive Chairman of Flock Associates. “Marketing procurement is on a journey from securing savings to creating value and continual growth. WFA’s Project Spring seeks to create a new role for marketing procurement, centred on becoming a true partner to marketing and agencies in the quest for greater value and growth”, he states. 

Francis continues, “To start, what technology is available to marketing procurement teams? If any, what technology is being used to support the transition from cost control, to supporting value and growth? What are the barriers to the adoption of great technology?”

He explains that the report is a great baseline and provides an insightful guide into procurement and marketing teams who wish to improve their game and “unleash the power of technology in their work”. 

The surprising highlight of this report, he concludes, is that many of the tools available are still very spend, cost or procurement-focused but are not yet driving marketing effectiveness. 

All information in the report was collected from a collaboration between many WFA members and Flock, to harness marketing procurement technology effectively.

The first section of the report explains that over 1 in 2 respondents are not satisfied with their current tech stack, while just above a third find it useful to drive marketing effectiveness. 

The report explains that it is therefore clear there is a big opportunity to harness marketing procurement technology more effectively, especially to drive marketing value. Many clients and WFA members are beginning the journey to organise their technology around ‘counting value’ as opposed to ‘counting cost’, but it can only happen from firm foundations and having ‘brilliant basics’ in place.

In a context where procurement is constantly being challenged to optimise cost; if the tools that the teams use don’t drive marketing effectiveness and value, they will likely be seen as a necessary evil rather than a growth driver. This could create a barrier to getting funding for marketing procurement tools.

Budget, access and adoption are the main barriers for WFA members to make the most out of procurement tech & tools, the report explains. By understanding what marketers value and what drives that value for them, as well as building business cases for investment against their requirements is a necessary step for procurement. 

Too many teams, the report states, are not aligned with what constitutes value with their marketing stakeholders. 

Once tools are deployed, there is still work required in order to strongly implement them. For effective implementation, teams must assess sustainable deployment, onboarding, training and refreshment plans.

Also included in the report is a table of 23 companies displaying a list of the marketing procurement tech tools and the functions of each, including; agency capability tool; agency marketplace; asset utilisation; RFP and third-party insights. 

Continuing to define value as per the WFA Sourcing Board, the report explains that “The goal of marketing is to drive business growth so value should be considered as any and all activities that improve brand performance. This covers all procurement activities that drive marketing efficiency and effectiveness whilst managing risk and building reputation”. 

According to the report, one in two have a budget for tools to help with repetitive manual processing work. 

Consider calculating the Return On Time of “killing” manual repetitive work, the report states, as well as the ROI of the new high-value tasks and initiatives that marketing procurement can support, if time spent on manual work is minimised.

Key criteria used by WFA members for selecting tools includes; price/cost; geographic coverage; integration with current tools; user-friendliness; anticipated ROI: efficiency gains & value. 

It continues to outline six steps which can help to select the right procurement tech for your team.

1. Define the problem you are trying to solve • Ensure there is a clear business case for the selection process • Ensure alignment with marketing strategy • Assess the risks of the selection, in particular data, security and operational risks • Use these to inform the next step, team selection, Responsibilities and accountabilities
2. Team allocation • Ensuring you have a team in place that has the capability to assess and validate the solutions and the ability to sponsor its delivery in the organisation is key • Use MarTech specialists to inform the technical selection • Where linkage with your internal systems is or IT has identified data or security risk IT should drive the process, but with the clear requirement to deliver marketing’s functional capability • Where data and security risks are low, marketing should drive the process with the support of IT and procurement
3. Clear requirements • Clear functional and technical requirements are key to a successful selection process. • These can be categorised to inform a scorecard against which to grade options through the process
4. Industry review and short-listing • Once the requirements are understood this information can be combined with the business case information and a finalised list of scoring criteria can be produced • A review of what is available in the market can then be conducted and compared with this criteria • The outcome of this process is a shortlist of potential vendors from which to choose from
5. The selection process • Initiated with the RFI we can understand more about how a broader range of technology fits with the specific strategic aims and functional requirements of the organisation. • One outcome from the RFI should be an understanding as to whether the technology is too complex or costly to perform agile trials to finalise the selection • If it is then a written response to the requirements, implementation and a financial proposal is required alongside a face-to-face demonstration to the selection team of the technology. • If agile trials are possible then legal documentation and any associated costs must be understood and approved before the trial starts • And clear KPIs and trial definitions must be created to ensure a fair comparison between technologies is conducted 
6. Pilot implementation • Implementation of a pilot for projects with significant investment is highly desirable provided the data, security and business impact is manageable within that process. It enables an in-situ validation without the risk of the full implementation

The report also includes members’ advice to ensure adoption, which can be viewed in full by downloading the report. 

Simon Francis is Executive Chairman of Flock Associates