Trending: Single Source Solutions for Marketing Supply Chain
Managing the modern marketing supply chain is, at best, a difficult balancing act between end users, suppliers, systems, costs, and risks. At worst, it’s a logistical nightmare that can derail a great campaign before it gets off the ground.
The problem at the center of most marketing supply chain issues is actually quite simple:
The demands on the modern marketing supply chain is simply too much for traditional management systems to handle.
Tools and processes that may have worked for years are proving ineffective at controlling the increasingly complex task of planning, producing and promoting marketing messages on a large scale.
Why?
For starters, the explosion of new channels introduced a whole new set of challenges to companies whose management systems weren’t built to handle them––leaving supply chains overloaded and undermanaged.
To adapt, companies are acquiring digital management tools to streamline and simplify their supply chains by managing everything through a single system.
USING SINGLE-SOURCE SOLUTIONS TO SIMPLIFY THE COMPLEX SUPPLY CHAIN
It’s easy to get lulled into thinking that all digital systems make management easier when in reality, most systems address just one or two pieces of the puzzle. Stringing together multiple systems in order to manage each link in the chain can actually amplify the challenges.
The answer: single-source solutions change that by encompassing the entire marketing supply chain from a single touchpoint.
Rather than relying on one system for ordering, another to send those orders to production, and yet another to distribute them, single-source marketing supply chain management systems coordinate it all from one place.
Here are a few of the ways single-source marketing systems make meaningful improvements where one-off tools don’t:
SEAMLESS DIGITAL ASSET MANAGEMENT (DAM) INTEGRATION
Rather than cross your fingers and hope that a standalone DAM system will integrate with a separate ordering system, single-source solutions combine the two into one.
This makes it easy for your corporate team to load campaign assets into just one system where each end user can directly order collateral.
ON-DEMAND PRINTING
Waste has traditionally been an inevitable part of large-scale supply chains, but by managing ordering and fulfillment with the same system, single-source tools allow for orders to be made as needed by end-users.
Rather than pay for inventory to sit on the floor in the lead-up to a campaign launch, users can tailor their orders to fit their particular needs and budget without wasting money in the process.
Not only can organizations save money, they also gain valuable insight into the quantity and frequency of orders. This provides opportunities to eliminate underutilized pieces and visibility into what communication is being accessed most frequently.
CONTROLLED PERSONALIZATION
Consumers are much more likely to engage with personalized marketing messages, yet most companies are hesitant to let end-users customize their marketing collateral out of fear that they’ll dilute the brand.
Single-source systems allow leadership to provide access to content that can be changed while ensuring legal and compliance content remains protected. This offers the best of both worlds – providing flexibility and access for customization while maintaining brand and legal compliance.
MULTICHANNEL MARKETING CAPABILITIES
For most companies with aging supply chain management systems, adding a new channel capability is like building on an already fragile house of cards––one tiny mistake can bring the whole thing down.
With a single-source solution, all channels are managed from one touchpoint, allowing you to spend time crafting great messages rather than worrying about how they’ll get delivered.
These are just a few of the ways single-source systems offer a genuine solution to the end-to-end marketing supply chain management, and here at OneTouchPoint, we’ve leveraged our in-house printing and fulfillment capabilities to create U.Connect, a unique single-source management tool encompassing every link in the marketing supply chain.
Click here to learn more about all the ways U.Connect helps manage the marketing supply chain.