Conferences & Papers

Conferences

The subject still does not receive the attention warranted by the size of the potential market.  

The Henry Stewart organisation regularly runs Marketing Operations Management Symposia in London, New York, Los Angeles and Amsterdam. These Conferences do cover MRM but are mainly concentrated on Digital Asset Management.  For MRM the strength of these Symposia is the high quality of the users' papers which are normally created to support the presentations.

For details of the conferences as they are published go to http://www.momsymposium.com

In the UK the Technology For Marketing Conference is beginning to cover MRM but does this from a direct mailing or Campaign management view which does not necessarily cover the whole gaumont of Marketing requirements.

For details of the Conference when it is published go to http://www.t-f-m.co.uk

Some of the best Conferences are run by the emerging MRM Suppliers and are by invitation only.   

Aprimo run particularly strong Conferences often presenting new findings from Kim Collins of Gartner.  If you can get an invite, do go. 

Papers and publications 

The definitive starting point for detailed research is

"Marketing Resource Management,  The noble art of getting things done in marketing. Efficiently" 

This 264 page paper back book, with lots of illustrations, is published directly by MRMLOGIQ, and was written by Romek Jansen and Frans Riemersma. Details are on their web site, www.mrmlogiq.com  from where copies can be obtained.  The book is an easy read but covers every task you will encounter as you begin Marketing automation or decide to improve what you already have in place.  It is agnostic, so is not slanted towards any one supplier, and includes contributions from various informed people working in this area (including me!).

Increasingly Suppliers are starting to put white papers on their sites as they obtain more details of successful MRM implementations by their customers.  Visits to these sites provide a useful insight.  

For starters try www.aprimo.com www.assetlink.com, www.neolane.com (white papers are accessed under Resources tab) and www.net-ways.com.

Surveys and informed comment are also collected and published on an excellent, non-supplier site, www.marketinggovernance.com/.  The site is well informed, useful and often thought provoking.  Papers are written by people who are working in this area and do not merely provide a Supplier-centric view.  

A new monthly Web magazine, "the marketing leaders", for people working professionally in Marketing often provides papers and organises conferences on MRM and using systems to better manage all aspects of Marketing.  This E-zine can be viewed at http://www.themarketingleaders.com

Useful for people who are just starting to consider installing MRM are the white papers produced by Michael Moon of Gistics.   Michael has wide experience of marketing systems and is the leading Guru on digital asset management and how the DAM can be used to help marketing.   One of his white papers on preparing the Business case for implementing a DAM is available as a free down load from http://www.digitalassets.net/  

Details of other research provided by Michael can be obtained by emailing  research@gistics.com

Blogs

Blogs are starting to appear on MRM, discussing features and various experiences related to implementation or functionality.  Quality varies enormously.  Some are consistently good, some start with enthusiasm and then fade away, whilst some are either complaints against a particular implementation or thinly disguised sales messages.  The majority are currently raised by suppliers, employees of suppliers, Agencies, or implementation consultants.  However there is a growing number from informed users who want to discuss the new technology. 

The better blogs are useful reading, and provide opportunities to network and contact people who may have experiences and knowledge which could be useful to your MRM implementation.  Often the discussion threads they raise are every bit as useful as the actual blog entry.

For interesting and informed content try visiting the following from time to time:

wordpress.com/tag/mrm  

myeducatedguess.blogs.techtarget.com

blogs.hillandknowlton.com/blogs/niallcook.

blog.widen.com/marketing-resource-management