When it comes to driving a marketing strategy for our businesses we are all very good at understanding where the company is at in the market place and in the eyes of the customer. But do we really take into account the commercial aspects of our strategy in terms of what this means for the business and our end to end supply chain?

How important is it to link the marketing strategy to how the business is driven from a supply chain perspective? Well is it very important as they are interlinked and have dependencies on each other.

Experienced marketers are taking their thinking further when understanding how the corporate and marketing strategy impact on how this drives the business from a commercial view point.

What I mean by commercial view point is how well we know what the end to end supply chain looks like for our business. What impact does our marketing strategy and structure have on the way we operate? Are we efficient and could we work smarter so we can deliver real results for our customers.

One of the best ways to explore this is to document all processes in the marketing department. Then run a workshop with all the internal and external suppliers that are represented in the end to end supply chain.

That way everyone is aware of what each area does and map out how long a process takes and the resources needed to achieve this. The output can then lead to ‘lean’ processes that drive real commercial benefit for the business.