Customer Relationship Management

Let us look at some of the key capabilities that Enterprise Marketing departments need:

• Capability to manage strategic planning process. This groups most of the requirements that are normally clubbed under the umbrella term Marketing Resource Management or MRM. Marketers need the ability to
• Manage plans for the upcoming plan period
• Manage budgets 
• Manage approvals with appropriate audit trails
• Manage goals and track metrics
• Capability to prepare for Marketing Tactics that have been identified from the planning process. Once the plans are finalized for the upcoming plan period, Marketers need the ability to
• Break down the strategic plans to execution tactics level
• Manage tactics like single or multistage campaigns and events
• Manage purchased lists
• Manage the creative or collateral development process
• Manage segmentation of the target audience
• Manage outside vendors for creative development 
• Manage related approvals
• Manage Marketing Calendar 
• Capability to execute Marketing Tactics. During the execution phase, Marketers would need the ability to
• Launch tactics across different channels like email, direct mail, phone, fax, etc.
• Run automated, triggered, multistage and recurring tactics
• Run campaigns in manageable chunks or waves
• Test launch campaigns
• Integrate with outside organizations partnering in campaign execution
• Capability to capture Responses and process them: Once campaigns are launched, Marketers need the ability to
• Capture responses to tactics coming in from different channels
• Associate responses to the right campaigns with minimal manual interventions
• Score responses based on a configurable set of scoring criteria
• Pass Responses / Leads back and forth with Sales department
• In addition to the above, there are also ongoing needs like Knowledge Management and Reporting that are commonly part of Enterprise Marketing requirements. And then there are other other industry specific requirements - like for instance, a brand marketer from consumer goods industry may require the ability to track the market share of the brand compared to competitors.

Current offerings from product vendors - including the ones from the Market leaders like Unica, Aprimo and Oracle – do not address all the above needs in a holistic and integrated manner. In fact, not all products seem to have all the capabilities mentioned above.

Would love to hear what your take is given the above needs and any other needs that you may have come across - Is functionality coverage in CRM products today sufficient for Enterprise Marketing?