In today's marketing landscape, marketers are faced with unprecedented challenges. They need to execute on a variety of channels and tactics to meet the demands of their customers while also maintaining the integrity of their brand. Business process discovery is one tool that enables marketing teams to operate smarter, execute faster, and scale easier so they can succeed in this competitive environment.
It's no secret that Marketing is one of the most important functions in any organization. It has a significant impact on revenue and client experience, and it's only expected to grow as more customers go digital. But managing marketing operations can be tricky. There are many moving parts: using data to inform decisions, evaluating potential projects for ROI, and understanding client needs across channels while working with tight budgets and limited resources.
But what if you could optimize your process? What if you knew your process so well that you had an exact roadmap for how to execute quicker? That is exactly what business process discovery (BPD) does! BPD helps marketing professionals figure out how they're currently operating and where they have room for improvement.
What is Business Process Discovery, and why does it matter to marketing teams?
Business process discovery is the first step in figuring out what to improve or how to make things better.
Process discovery helps marketing teams document the "AS IS" state of their process to understand how they're currently operating, where the opportunities for improvement are, and what to do about it. This is a critical step in your Process Improvement initiative.
"You can't plot a course to where you want to go if you don't know where you're today."
Process discovery is also the method used to make your process visible, getting out of your team's head, and safely documented.
Process discovery is part of Business Process Management (BPM) practices.
The benefits of identifying and optimizing processes are usually two-fold: Firstly, the marketing team receives a better understanding of what needs to happen to execute their tasks effectively. Secondly, by improving operations through process optimization, marketing teams can operate smarter, execute faster, and scale easier.
This blog post is a deep dive into how business process discovery can help your marketing team operate more effectively by understanding the processes they need to complete to achieve their goals.
We will cover topics like:
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How does business process discovery help marketers execute faster?
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Who is involved in process discovery?
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What questions should you ask during the process discovery exercise?
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Why should a company invest in business process discovery for their marketing team?
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The benefits of business process discovery for the marketing team
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A case study on how one company used BPD to improve its marketing performance
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How can you get started with Business Process Discovery today?
How does business process discovery help marketers execute faster?
Process discovery helps your marketing team execute tasks faster by understanding what is happening in the current format and what needs to happen to complete those tasks.
The steps of identifying marketing processes and evaluating how well they are optimized reduce the time it takes for your team to execute their work by decreasing the amount of wasted time on things that don't need attention or fixing problems that can be avoided altogether. Marketing teams can then focus more energy on connecting with your audience instead of operational chaos.
The process discovery method also gets your processes out of your team's head, where they are now visible for everyone to see, which saves time explaining them.
This visibility also helps marketing teams stay on their toes and be more aware of opportunities where process optimization could increase efficiency or effectiveness.
By performing a process discovery exercise, you can find hidden bottlenecks that may not have been noticeable before.
Who is involved in process discovery?
When conducting a process discovery session, you may be joined by a variety of people, such as:
- A project manager who is in charge of the process discovery session
- Salespeople and marketing professionals to identify any bottlenecks or handoff issues that are hurting sales or marketing efforts
- Members of your team that is involved in the process's execution.
- The IT team to help with understanding what software is in place, like marketing automation and data analytics tools.
- Specialist in process management and improvement.
Each person will have a different perspective on how things are going in the current process, so you may want to involve them in finding out what's working well and what needs improvement.
This way, everyone is committed and on the same page from day one.
What questions should you ask during the process discovery exercise?
When it comes to process discovery, asking the right questions is to the success of the exercise.
Here are a few process discovery questions you can start with:
- Why do we need this process?
- What is the desired outcome of the process?
- What’s repetitive about this process that we can cut out?
- What problems do you see in your daily work with this process?
- Who are the key stakeholders in this process?
Note that some employees may be hesitant to answer these questions out of fear. Make your employees comfortable by ensuring that you will not hold any negative bias towards them for their feedback.
Often, you'll find that people have a different understanding of how the process works.
Why should a company invest in business process discovery for their marketing team?
When marketing works, it funnels through the entire business. Sales get better leads, and customer service has the answers to common questions your audience asks. Your company should invest in process discovery because it will increase marketing efficiency, which in turn increases conversion rates, leads, and revenue.
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The amount of time spent on process discovery is typically worth 50% more than invested.
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Marketing teams should look for any gaps or holes that need to be filled and focus on those areas first so they can avoid common mistakes from happening again.
The benefits of business process discovery for the marketing team
Common benefits for marketing are :
- Marketing becomes more efficient
- Has a better understanding of the process and how things work together
- It's easier to see bottlenecks in processes that need attention or change.
Business Process Discovery Benefits for marketing: Improved client experience, increased conversion rates, higher revenue, and locates area to track strong KPIs.
With Business process discovery, you can identify repeatable processes that are not being completed and processes where manual intervention is required.
Business Processes that marketing should be looking for:
Lead scoring - Is lead score assigned to every contact? If so, how do you know which leads need attention the most? What if there isn't a scoring system in place yet?
Lead nurturing – How does the company segment and nurture leads based on client data and activity?
Marketing automation – How does the process flow from lead to sale? What is our workflow like for each stage of a campaign?
The bottom line:
Business Process Discovery has a tone of benefits for marketing teams. It helps marketers execute faster, scale easier and operate smarter by analyzing business processes that need to be improved for better performance or process improvement."
A case study on how one company used BPD to improve its marketing performance
One company used BPD to improve its marketing performance by analyzing two processes in the lead-to-sale process. First, the company had a goal of increasing conversion rates from leads within 30 days but found that there were bottlenecks between some steps, and certain team members weren't updating data because they believed other teammates would take care of it.
After the BPD process, their marketing team was able to identify and assign responsibilities for each step in the lead-to-sale process. They also created a new role of "Lead Handler," which is responsible for updating data across all departments after receiving a lead from Salesforce so that marketing has the most up-to-date data when it comes time to create new campaigns that attract new leads.
By applying process discovery, the marketing team was able to operate smarter and execute faster by reducing inefficiencies in their processes so they could scale easier without spending too much time training new hires on a confusing process.
How can you get started with Business Process Discovery today?
You can start your process discovery today by following these five steps:
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Plan your project - Create a list of all the business processes you want to analyze from start to finish. Start with shorter and simpler tasks, then work towards more complex ones as you get more experienced in process mapping.
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Gather resources needed for each step - Estimating the needs of completing this process mapping project will help you budget properly.
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Map your process - Complete a flowchart of the business process and add all steps as needed for each step in the process, including any data input or output that occurs at those points. Be sure to label these inputs and outputs with letters, so they are easy to identify on your map.
In Conclusion
Business Process Discovery is an important part of any marketing team’s strategy. It helps your company align and execute its goals, allowing them to focus their efforts on the most impactful tasks that will lead to success for your business. Even if you have a strategic plan in place, it can be hard to see how the pieces all fit together unless they are visually mapped out using BPD methods like Business Process Mapping (BPM). If you want help with this critical step in digital marketing implementation, contact us today! We offer a variety of packages that include everything from strategy to full-scale deployment.