“I’m already investing in other marketing technology, like Big Data. What’s the value of investing in creative operations management?”

It’s a fair question, and one that we spend a lot of time answering with our different customer groups. People tend to assume that the value of creative operations, and ConceptShare specifically, is that it makes the process of reviewing and approving creative work easier. There is value there, no question – reviewing creative work by email is awful.

For the freelancers and small businesses we work with, that’s a big part of the value they see in ConceptShare, and we’re happy to help them make their review process easier and more efficient.

But we also work with some of the largest marketing organizations in the world, and from their point of view, the value proposition of creative operations is much broader, and it ties directly back to Big Data.

Big Data, in simple terms, just means that these organizations have more information about their customers, and that information lets them better segment and target those customers. All of a sudden, thanks to all this data, the potential of one-to-one marketing (the marketer’s dream!) is a reality. That’s why every marketer is enamoured with it.

What does enamoured look like in numbers?

But this investment only creates opportunities for a select few marketing teams.

Why?

Most don’t have the operational efficiency in place to take advantage of Big Data.

Let me explain, because that’s a bold statement. Big data is a huge opportunity, but if you don’t have the process and structure to produce the volume of assets you’ll need to take advantage of it, you won’t get the results you’re hoping for. To really execute on a plan informed by Big Data, you’ll need thousands (or hundreds of thousands or millions) of assets to fuel all of the hyper-targeted campaigns that become possible because of Big Data. Can your existing process support that?

Big data can be a competitive advantage, but operational efficiency is a prerequisite.

In my experience, most marketers don’t have the infrastructure or operational efficiency in their creative process to truly take advantage of big data. Without optimizing the asset production process, the investments they’re making in Big Data to better segment and target customers is minimized, because with the time, budget and resource constraints they’re facing, they simply can’t produce the assets needed.

Not being able to create enough assets in time minimizes the other investments you’re making in marketing technology to realize the potential of Big Data.

For our enterprise customers, that’s the real value of creative operations management. Beyond making the review and approval process faster, creative operations is optimizing everything that happens between “I need an asset” and “I have an asset.” Optimizing this process is a requirement to fully realize the potential of and the investments that enterprise marketing teams are making in Big Data.

So how does your organization stack up?

If you had to give yourself a grade on creative operations, based on your operational preparedness to execute on the opportunity of Big Data, what would it be?

I’d love to hear about how you’re currently working to streamline the process of getting from “I need an asset” to “I have an asset.” Leave a comment, or drop me a line at nish.patel@conceptshare.com.