Built by marketers, for marketers.
October 15, 2012
Built by marketers, for marketers.

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Overall Satisfaction
Pros
- In general the capabilities within Marketing Resource Management seem like a platform built by marketers for marketers.
- The out of the box processes are pretty
- The uniformity of the user experience across modules makes user training and change management a lot We are still in early stages of using the reporting capabilities, but we can see lots of value in what they Unica was not as standardized.
- We are still very much focused on adoption.
Cons
- Users have to adjust to Aprimo. More challenging for organizations that have deep-rooted processes and this is something that has to be addressed in training.
- The portal full application experience varies greatly and it can become cumbersome for users to communicate via Aprimo on projects.
- We are early users of the tool so it's hard to quantify actual benefits yet, but the following metrics have been established per business function:
- Brand & Creative - Cycle time from creative brief intake to delivering the final design; Number of reviews/re-works per creative request
- Field Marketing - Time to consolidate a field marketing forecast
- Digital Engagement - Cycle time to complete a website request
- PHSS - Time to complete a marketing plan for a specific PHSS campaign
- CEOP - # of emails and phone calls required to get a CEOP request through the cycle; Time to develop a consolidate quarterly report on CEOP requests/status
- Email Marketing - End-to-end email production process, through to launch date (# of launches that don't stay on schedule; # of email launches that have mistakes - audience, sender line, grammar; # of email launches that involve internal complaints, miscommunications)
- On-boarding/CDRP - Time to generate a quarterly client status regionalization report; Errors in data capture and missed deadlines; Capacity to handle on-boarding requests
- Direct Mail - % of mail campaign requests that miss 15-day approval service level, Involvement of LOB/ Stakeholders in the review process while maintaining response time.
Product Usage
100 - 100 users in Marketing:
– Brand And Creative
– Field Marketing
– Consumer marketing (Direct Response)
– PHSS Marketing
– RCO Microsites
– Corporate Microsites
– Celebrity and Entertainment programs
– Brand And Creative
– Field Marketing
– Consumer marketing (Direct Response)
– PHSS Marketing
– RCO Microsites
– Corporate Microsites
– Celebrity and Entertainment programs
1 - We have one contracted resource, but we are taking steps to secure full-time employees. We expect 1-2 FTEs to support this deployment.
- In aggregate, Aprimo supports 6 processes and their sub-processes:
- Field Marketing - National Campaign workflow
- Field Marketing - Template Edit workflow
- Brand & Creative - Creative Review workflow
- RCO Microsite - Microsite workflow
- Microsites - Corporate Microsite and WPG workflow
- PHSS- PHSS workflow
- Direct Response creative processes
Evaluation and Selection
We had no legacy systems that deliver the same capabilities. We were just using mass communication tools.
Unica - Both platforms (i.e. Unica and Aprimo) delivered comparable capabilities. However, due to internal limitations around technical support and technical maturity of the organization we selected Aprimo as it delivered the more user friendly user interface. Unica requires more technical saviness. With Aprimo you can be completely non-technical.
We evaluated Epsilon, but they were too expensive and don’t compete on price.
We evaluated Axciom. They offered an outsourced full service and were very powerful, but we wanted to bring capabilities more in-house. The capabilities were more advanced that we needed today. We felt Aprimo or Unica could both carry us a long way.
We did not look at marketing automation vendors like Eloqua, Marketo. From a scale standpoint, we were looking for campaign management and not just marketing automation. Also wanted MRM (Marketing Resource Management) or internal workflow management capabilities. We did not take a deep dive as they didn’t have the full suite solution.
We evaluated Epsilon, but they were too expensive and don’t compete on price.
We evaluated Axciom. They offered an outsourced full service and were very powerful, but we wanted to bring capabilities more in-house. The capabilities were more advanced that we needed today. We felt Aprimo or Unica could both carry us a long way.
We did not look at marketing automation vendors like Eloqua, Marketo. From a scale standpoint, we were looking for campaign management and not just marketing automation. Also wanted MRM (Marketing Resource Management) or internal workflow management capabilities. We did not take a deep dive as they didn’t have the full suite solution.
Implementation
- Vendor implemented
- Professional services company
TopRight (http://toprightpartners.com/).
Training
Configuration
We have not had any need for customization. We went into this with the mantra of let’s adapt ourselves to the platform.
Support
Usability
Reliability
Integration
- Our first goal is to get integrated with data warehouse (Teradata). Ultimately the data warehouse will have integrations to Salesforce.com etc.
Teradata owns Aprimo and are integrated. It was a factor in our decision, though I'm not sure if there’s a system integration advantage, as Teradata has been agnostic historically.
Vendor Relationship
Deeply discounted licenses. If you have in-house resources capable of configuring of the platform you will have significant savings in implementation costs.
Comments
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