Connect with us

Global Banking and Finance Review is an online platform offering news, analysis, and opinion on the latest trends, developments, and innovations in the banking and finance industry worldwide. The platform covers a diverse range of topics, including banking, insurance, investment, wealth management, fintech, and regulatory issues. The website publishes news, press releases, opinion and advertorials on various financial organizations, products and services which are commissioned from various Companies, Organizations, PR agencies, Bloggers etc. These commissioned articles are commercial in nature. This is not to be considered as financial advice and should be considered only for information purposes. It does not reflect the views or opinion of our website and is not to be considered an endorsement or a recommendation. We cannot guarantee the accuracy or applicability of any information provided with respect to your individual or personal circumstances. Please seek Professional advice from a qualified professional before making any financial decisions. We link to various third-party websites, affiliate sales networks, and to our advertising partners websites. When you view or click on certain links available on our articles, our partners may compensate us for displaying the content to you or make a purchase or fill a form. This will not incur any additional charges to you. To make things simpler for you to identity or distinguish advertised or sponsored articles or links, you may consider all articles or links hosted on our site as a commercial article placement. We will not be responsible for any loss you may suffer as a result of any omission or inaccuracy on the website. .

Business

HOW PREDICTIVE MARKETING ANALYTICS EMPOWERS FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP

HOW PREDICTIVE MARKETING ANALYTICS EMPOWERS FINANCIAL LEADERSHIP

Phil Crothers, Chief Marketing Officer, BrightTarget

The role of the CFO is changing from “cost authority to business value architect”, as Accenture neatly put it[i]. 73% of finance leaders say they’ve been more engaged with strategy over the past two years; financial management is no longer the CFO’s sole domain:

“Finance 2020 – tomorrow’s digital finance organisation – is a radical departure from the status quo. It deals in analytics and forward-looking decisions to create value and manage risk. […] It trades reporting the past for predicting the future.”

CFOs need to add greater strategic value in order to become core decision-makers, responsible for driving organisational growth.

Right now though, three major barriers prevent finance executives from realising their full leadership potential, which can be solved through the adoption of predictive marketing analytics. Focus on these three main benefits for CFOs..

  • Predictive marketing analytics align Finance and Marketing

Traditionally, the finance and marketing relationship has been a difficult one. This prevents the fruitful collaboration needed to drive growth. As Forrester observes:

“Marketing and finance share the goal of increasing revenue but often have different perspectives and key performance indicators without a shared understanding of their relationship. In many cases, marketing struggles to demonstrate its value to the finance team, which results in underfunded marketing departments that can’t produce the business results finance leaders are most focused on.”[ii]

Marketing feels they’re not getting recognition for their achievements. Finance sees marketing as an endless cost centre. This is not an easy fix. Forrester research shows 78% of respondents agree that marketing-finance alignment is vitally important, but only 15% feel that the two departments currently work together towards shared goals.

At the very core of this rift is an inability to measure the impact of marketing in wider financial terms. That’s where predictive marketing analytics steps in.

Advanced predictive creates a centralised metric that brings marketing and finance onto the same page: Customer Lifetime Value, CLV, which represents predicted lifetime revenue in quantitative financial terms.

CLV allows marketing to see which accounts are most worth targeting so it can better focus its efforts, and in turn build a better business case for reinvestment; and finance can see exactly where revenue is coming from, through a clear, centralised dashboard. Finance executives get complete future-based oversight of marketing performance towards tangible financial goals – so they can make better decisions about the wider business.

  • Predictive marketing analytics put customers at the centre of business decision-making

Smart organisations understand the importance of a customer-centric business model, and prioritise metrics like customer loyalty as key drivers for long-term profitability.

However, this customer-centric business model has traditionally been at odds with the legacy finance function. Finance focuses on quantitative financial metrics like cost, profit and revenue. There’s little space for metrics like customer loyalty within that model – which has held financial leaders back.

Predictive marketing analytics provide rigorous, quantitative metrics that can be trusted. Businesses can embrace a more customer-centric approach that’s driven by, not detached from, firm financial insight.

  • Predictive marketing analytics dissolve data silos

Data silos reduce visibility across the business, stopping CFOs from developing a unified forward-looking narrative. CFO.com reports more than 70% of surveyed finance executives rank their biggest 2017 goal as supporting business decision-making – but over 90% say they need to do more with financial and operational data to help make those decisions[iii].

Predictive marketing analytics overcomes this hurdle by giving CFOs centralised oversight that transcends individual departments. This centralised data forms a unified narrative for the CFO to form insights that drive business strategy. This narrative relies on Customer Lifetime Value and allows unifying the business around customer-centric goals. With these insights, CFOs can better allocate resources, better forecast, and even identify new market possibilities.

The hurdles that prevent financial executives being better strategic leaders are overcome with predictive marketing analytics. The sector is picking up pace rapidly though, as Forrester validates with its June 2017 ‘Forrester Wave™: Predictive Marketing Analytics for B2B Marketers Q2 2017’ report[iv].

The comprehensive report, downloadable here, lends significant credibility to predictive, emphasising “Early PMA adopters are seeing their efforts turn into real, measurable results”.

[i]Accenture Strategy, Finance 2020: Death by Digital

[ii]Forrester, How Aligning Finance and Marketing Will Drive Business Success

[iii]CFO.com, CFO’s Top Goal for 2017: Better Analysis and Reporting

[iv]BrightTarget Cited as a Strong Performer for Predictive Analytics for B2B Marketing”

Global Banking & Finance Review

 

Why waste money on news and opinions when you can access them for free?

Take advantage of our newsletter subscription and stay informed on the go!


By submitting this form, you are consenting to receive marketing emails from: Global Banking & Finance Review │ Banking │ Finance │ Technology. You can revoke your consent to receive emails at any time by using the SafeUnsubscribe® link, found at the bottom of every email. Emails are serviced by Constant Contact

Recent Post