0.3 Customer value and process waste
In the aftermath of World War 2, few could have predicted the powerhouse that Japanese manufacturing would become. The cash-strapped economy made financing the large inventory methods of production that were popular and well established in the United States very difficult. US factories could efficiently churn out high volumes of vehicles or other products at relatively low cost.
To compete, Japanese industry needed to operate differently and within its own strengths and constraints. Japan’s high unemployment though meant that worker productivity was not major limitation and low post-war demand in the Japanese economy meant mass production was not a priority.
Toyota, today known as a global manufacturing behemoth was originally a textile company before moving into automobile production in the 1930s. In 1945 Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer joined Toyota and started employing a concept of minimising waste, and between 1948 and 1975 a system was developed that would go on to become known as the Toyota Production System (TPS).
TPS was designed over time to combine just-in-time manufacturing, which had been pioneered by Kiichiro Toyoda in 1938, with process design to reduce stress within the system, inconsistency and waste. Unlike the mega factories of the US, Toyota built smaller factories to house only materials the factory was immediately working on. Following this lead, stock inventory levels were kept low, investment in in-process inventory was kept at a minimum, and the time between parts and resources being purchased and turned around as products to be sold was reduced, freeing up investment in other resources. The constraints of low cash, low demand and low space for large factories were recalibrated, and by investing in process value rather than volume Toyota were able to develop an entirely lean operating model.
Inconsistency was designed out, the process was made flexible enough to respond to need without creating stress, and all waste was removed. Waste of overproduction. Waste of time waiting before the next task can start. Waste of transportation. Waste of processing. Waste of excess work-in-progress inventory. Waste of movement. Waste of making defective products. Waste of underutilized workers. Today, just-in-time and Lean processes are the basis of most manufacturing models globally.
Take a sideways look at the Toyota forms of waste and you’ll see the same types of waste that most marketing organisations accept every day. Overproduction of content and assets. Planning and scheduling between teams – waiting days or weeks to get everyone together to make a decision. Copying, saving and duplicating files. Spending too much time on work that doesn’t add value – internal meetings, reporting, overthinking messaging. Too much work that’s in progress rather than delivering value and lack of reporting visibility on WIP. Redoing work because there are mistakes or inaccuracies. If you are doing process work that can’t measurably demonstrate how it will impact one of these, stop now as your process work is probably waste in itself. And if you have an process that doesn’t have measurement of its own process effectiveness, start planning how to create that. This is the game, this your priority.
Technology, regulation and economic headwinds are disrupting all organisations. The increasing frequency of these pressures elevates the importance of responding quickly to data, and it is reasonable to expect that pressures to change culture, purpose, organisational structure and business value will only increase too. To support this, flexibility, innovation, speed and data-driven decision making in Marketing will only grow.
Marketing organisations today are progressively connecting customers to relevant experiences. For the highest performing organisations, speed is critically important for the operating model and the culture. Those marketing teams are becoming capable of delivering connected, relevant, frictionless experiences value at scale and speed. They are creating a world in which people, business requirements and sales teams are interacting quickly and easily. For some organisations this disruption is liberating; for others it may produce an existential threat. Marketing organisations must learn to operate in a way that enables creating great connected experiences more easily, makes the lives of the teams crating those experiences have clearer focus, makes the data model behind analysing the experiences more action-oriented and drives greater business value for every marketing dollar invested. This new approach to marketing enables teams to respond to change with agility but requires embracing continuous planning, ongoing leadership throughout the marketing org and a fundamental understanding of what actually moves the needle for customers.
Why do some organisations achieve record sales growth regardless of marketing conditions with marketing that would seemingly barely get a look in at an awards ceremony, where other organisations scoop up all the awards but see little growth? How do some marketing campaigns get under the skin of entire industries and shake them up? And why are some marketing teams able to consistently churn out these programmes, where others achieve the occasional hit only by apparent accident? The answer to all these questions is that, by and large, great marketing activities are created by great Marketing teams.
The Marketing function, how it operates, how it operationalises the disciplines of expertise to achieve the objectives, and how it applies best practices across the customer journey, building brand and demand and aligning to sales objectives, is what drives great marketing value. Great marketing individuals or teams inside disorganised, disconnected, or dysfunctional marketing teams cannot fulfil their full potential. In great teams one and one make three; in average marketing teams one and one make one. Brand impacts events, lead generation and digital. Websites support lead generation, events and activate brand. Thought leadership informs content, website copy first-call Sales decks. Lead generation activates brand through content, website and digital. Marketing is interconnected. It is only the marketing team that acts as if it isn’t.
Marketing works by operationalising inception aligned to the customer’s purchase process and Sales methodology. Some marketers may not like to think of their output as a product, but it would behove them to understand the parallels. High quality continuous delivery of great marketing aligned to an optimised data and performance model requires a reassessment of priorities, a restructuring of governance and a reinforcement of core principles of operating practice. No effort is wasted when it is applied in the name of progress. Learning what doesn’t work, what doesn’t correlate, what isn’t valuable and what you don’t properly understand is still learning. Doing all the wrong things but taking lessons learned from them is still moving forwards.
Endless hours effort are wasted, though, when the same mistakes are repeated and replicated without understanding there is a better way. Effort unknowingly wasted is still effort wasted, and transforming marketing teams from alchemy to science is the opportunity of all marketing leaders.
Marketing works when it works together. When brand campaigns run without demand campaigns to convert, awareness is generated that doesn’t convert to business. When live events are run without digital surround people attend without understanding context. When area marketing teams run webinars without understanding what global blog teams are promoting there is no bigger picture.