By Kim Rebecca

Automating the quarter-end production of fund fact sheets and other marketing materials can be a life saver for marketers. It dramatically reduces errors and improves time-to-market. However, convincing your organization to get on board with an automation initiative isn’t always easy. Making a solid business case to leadership and key stakeholders is essential. At most firms, the IT group is often the hardest to convince, but their buy-in is absolutely critical. You simply cannot move forward on this type of project without dedicated resources from IT. The IT manager will want to be sure that outsourcing a solution to a vendor is the right move and that dedicating resources to an automation project is a good investment. So, how should you present your case to IT decision makers?

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(The following blog post is the third in a series on the need for the Investment Management Industry to embrace sound data management practices. You can access the first and second posts here.)

Earlier today I was on a conference call with one of the largest asset management firms in the world.  The call was with marketing people representing operational groups in London, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and New York. The purpose of the call was to discuss factsheet automation and the need to unify their operations.  Interestingly, we could hardly stay on topic about documents and automation tools because their real problem was source data.

During the call, each group expressed their internal challenges in collecting clean, verifiably accurate and finalized data for reporting use.

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What role does technology play in your financial marketing strategy?

Changing regulation, customer behavior, and competition are changing the way financial brands conduct marketing, and new technologies have become a vital part of the plan.

From marketing automation and sales enablement to data management and reporting platforms, there is an abundance of financial marketing technology available to help marketers take their brands to the top.Read More

What is the biggest mistake firms make in their technology RFP process?  The answer: Failing to call references.

The request for references is almost always included when putting-out an RFP, but what’s shocking is that 75% of the time, firms never call them. The excuse is usually something along the lines of, “No one’s going to put down a bad reference, so why bother to call?”

This is a huge mistake.Read More