exchange4media organized MarTech India 2019 conference on Friday, August 23, 2019. I spoke about best practices for selecting products and vendors for building your own omnichannel stack. The key takeaway was that Omni-channel (as well as Digital Experience) Platforms don’t exist. You have to build them.
- It can be tempting to consider suite vendors as one-stop-shop for all digital marketing needs. But our research shows otherwise. There is no such thing as “end to end solution” or “out of the box” platform. Look for best of breed solutions to build your own omni-channel stack
- If you do license a suite, do keep these in mind:
- Consider individual products in the suite (or cloud) based on their own merit and not because they are part of the suite. Many individual products within suites are indeed well-regarded but they should be selected based on their own capablities and not because they are offered as part of suite.
- Many of the suite vendors have cobbled together their suites based on several acquisitions. As a result, their offering is not really a single tool in terms of user experience and architecture but often a package of multiple products and tools.
Don’t assume all the components of suite/cloud are well integrated. Plan for additional effort/resources.
The MarTech marketplace is evolving rapidly and is becoming increasingly complex. But I believe there’s scope for simplification there and the hype needs to be contained.
Alan Pelz-Sharpe raised some good points about the MarTech hype. He makes the point that technology can help but Marketers shouldn’t assume it’ll do their work of building relationships, innovate or lead change. Carlos Doughty, Founder of Martech Alliance presented 4Ps of Marketing Technology, a framework that suggests marketers consider Planning, People and Processes are required in addition to Platforms for overall success.
Thanks to exchange4media for a well-organised conference.