As if BI, BA, BPM, BAM and CPM Were not enough…

If you’re wondering:

BI = Business Intelligence
BA = Business Analytics (this is really a distinct category?)
BPM = Business Performance or Process Management or Monitoring, 
          depending on who you talk to
BAM = Business Activity Monitoring or Management, depending on
          who you talk to
CPM = Corporate Performance Management

Now we can add these “disciplines” to the Deconstruction of Marketing:

MOM = Marketing Operations Management – apparently, the idea here is the “Creative” side of Marketing can continue to do what they do while the easy stuff – you know, things like execution and measurement – are taken care of by machines

MDM = Marketing Decision Making
MCM = Marketing Content Management
DAM = Digital Asset Management (apparently subset of  MOM)
MRM = Marketing Resource Management (cross between MOM
           and DAM? – Thanks, Ron)
EMM = Enterprise Marketing Management ( rollup of all? –
           Thanks Jacques)

Question: What is the value of this microsegmentation of Analytics and Marketing?  Is it simply to sell software, in which case it should be questioned immediately – wouldn’t we be better off if all this stuff was bolted together seamlessly?  Remember CRM without any Analytics, which is just absolutely nutty on the face of it?  Can you believe all these subdisciplines actually have their own Conferences?  No wonder the CFO thinks Marketing is nuts…

Please explain to me why this is happening and why it makes sense…

Anybody?

6 thoughts on “As if BI, BA, BPM, BAM and CPM Were not enough…

  1. Uh oh… you’re in for some trouble. You left off MRM — Marketing Resource Management. The people who put on MRM conferences are some bad-ass dudes. You’re in a heap of trouble, bud.

  2. Gosh! I didn’t see EMM (Enterprise Marketing Mangement; no kidding, it’s got a Wikipedia entry).

    Yes, maybe the need to sell software; some byproduct of having hundreds of thousands of programmers out there. They got to code something!

    Or maybe it’s the lack of conceptual synthesis; easier to take complex situations by bits and pieces, and create whole bodies of “knowledge” around them.

  3. Can we assume that a “need” has been identified and these products fill that need? Is the need real or simply a result of of a skills gap between what a CMO is and what they should be, and this software tries to fill that gap?  Or is this all just a form of “outsourcing” key marketing functions to IT, what Regis McKenna refers to in Total Access as “Marketing disappearing into the Network”?

    Here’s one thing I see that is perhaps a partial explanation: IT people are much more interested in learning how Marketing works than Marketing people are interested in learning how IT works. 

  4. You left off a whole bunch…. Seriously though, it seems like these fads run up costs without much real benefit. I go back to my favorite principle: the 1/e rule, whereby any company that spends 1/3 of its resources in internal controls is bound to spin into liquidation. It’s not just that these systems overlap each other but also that they add little value to managers… who can track over 20 metrics each day?
    This microsegmentation is the meal ticket to a lot of folks at the expense of their clients, just think of the books, conferences, software packages, consultants and others that make part of this cottage industry.

  5. Adelino, please feel free to post the ones I forgot!

    To me, at least all these ideas have one thing in common – they try to define and fix business processes. The paradox of focusing on one silo, say Marketing, is you don’t really capture the value of process management, since the breakdown typically takes place across silos. When you focus on one silo like this, you run the risk of automating worst practices in Marketing and not capturing the negative impact on Sales or Service of these worst practices.

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