Compared to a decade ago, some would argue that the marketers of today have it easy.  There’s a technology solution for pretty much everything from web analytics to ad serving.  But it’s not as straightforward as you might think.
 
The real challenge for marketers is in understanding that the sum of their systems combined is greater than any individual application.  And that’s often where the headaches begin.  From a technical point of view, just how do you get all these disparate systems to work together?   And from a business process point of view, what benefits can be derived from this integration - more effective reporting for example? This is a key talking point at the All About The Cloud event that I am attendinged this week (and it wasn’t just limited to marketers).

From a marketer’s perspective it’s all about understanding customers – and most businesses use a CRM system to do this.  However, CRM systems are limited in terms of what customer data they hold.  Much of the data marketers need to truly understand their customer lies beyond their CRM systems.  So they start trying to combine information with a view to identifying which ad placement drove the most leads.  Where did they go on your site?  Did they buy? 

And here’s where it can get technically sticky.  Some systems offer integration but others don’t and invariably it becomes a compromise of keeping one system over another.

But, what if you could have a choice of retaining the good, letting go of the bad and harvesting the best of each of your marketing platforms and integrating them in on-premise or in the cloud?  Thanks to platforms like Boomi, which integrate any combination of cloud and on-premise applications – without coding or software - this is now possible.

As a result marketers are now freed from the tethers of technology and able to focus on their ultimate end-game – understanding the mindset of their customers and delivering marketing campaigns with maximum ROI.