Filling the Planning Vaccuum

By Doug Church and Michael Dolenko

The planning session was at a critical point. The software company's executive committee had taken the leap of faith and decided to re-brand the entire corporation to position for growth. An agency was retained. Schedules were juggled and all senior executives and marketing managers were engaged in a day-long planning session. With the preliminaries out of the way, it was time to face the more contentious issue of defining the company's brand promise.

• The Senior Vice President responsible for software development was adamant. The new brand should focus on the technical sophistication of the software architecture.

• The Vice President of Sales calmly noted that customers seemed to appreciate flexible contract terms; perhaps flexibility should be the new brand's watchword.

• The Manager of Customer Service, meanwhile, felt that the new branding needed to reflect responsiveness.

• At the centre of the table, the Vice President of Marketing was working hard to steer the group to his view; brand had to communicate the ROI that customers could expect from using the software.

That's when the following questions arose:

• What do our customers see as our unique strengths as an organization?
• How do we compare to competitors?
• How does our software benefit our customers?
• How do our competitors' customers see us?

While people thought they had answers to some of the questions, the project was too important to base decisions on conjecture alone. In the absence of definitive answers, the planning session reached a standstill.

If you can relate to this scenario, then you appreciate the difficulty and potential pitfalls of planning in the absence of reliable information. Whether you are faced with far-reaching strategic decisions, or short-term tactical ones, having good information can mean the difference between success and failure.

We call this absence of reliable information the planning vacuum. And, like the vacuum of space, it can be a hostile environment.

Without solid information, planning sessions sometimes quickly disintegrate into disagreements among managers over facts. Anyone who has heard the utterance: "I think what our customers really want is…" followed by anecdotal evidence or blatantly biased opinion knows what we mean.

Too often, without reliable and actionable information, conjecture and internal agendas overtake sound marketing strategy and planning. The outcome is marketing plans that miss the mark. Planning in this vacuum can also be an unpleasant experience that generates reluctance amongst managers to engage in this critical activity.

This article highlights some of Phase 5's learnings. Filling the planning vacuum with information not only produces better strategies and plans, but smooths the planning process itself. These lessons arise from our experience leading new product, service and brand planning sessions with management groups in technology, financial services, information and media and government sectors.

Lesson #1: Research and planning need to work together

As any marketing initiative proceeds, there should be recognition that research and planning are not separate processes. They work hand-in-hand, back and forth, as part of a single process in which decisions are made based on reliable, objective information. Furthermore, the two components strike a necessary balance between conceptual and analytical thinking, and between corporate realities and objective market input. This implies the managers need to work research into the planning process, and vice versa.

Lesson #2: Research and planning work best as part of an iterative process

In our experience, successful new product, service, and marketing communications initiatives often leverage an iterative process in which structured planning sessions and marketing or audience research work in tandem.

A recent new product development initiative by a major financial institution was well structured to gather and incorporate objective customer data into the planning process. After basing the initial business plan on competitive analysis and large-sample customer surveys, the team set up the following sequence of research and planning activities:

• Qualitative Research with Customer Segments. An initial series of focus groups explored the potential of the new product with different customer groups. The findings showed that while the new product appealed to small and mid-sized businesses, it didn't have legs with most consumer segments.

• Customer Requirements Analysis. The findings from the focus groups allowed the development team to focus on building features and functionality for the business market. This enabled them to streamline development times and costs. Consumer requirements weren't disregarded. Instead, the team kept these as a "back-pocket reference" so that what they developed for business markets could be adapted without a complete redesign if and when consumer demand evolved.

• Concept Testing and Refinement Research. The bank's team developed a product prototype for the business market. Before finalizing specifications, the prototypes were tested in one-on-one sessions that allowed customer to simulate hands-on usage.

• Launch Planning and Beyond. Findings from the research allowed the team to prioritize the remaining development activities into pre-and post-launch. The results from the concept testing interviews also served as the basis for planning customer support and communications - by knowing where customers were likely to encounter difficulties and have questions, the bank was able to develop proactive communications for roll-out.

While this structure worked well for the bank, keep in mind that there's no single best approach. Every organization needs to find the optimal mix of research and planning methodologies to suit its objectives, timeliness, budget and culture. The key is to try to fashion an iterative process in which research and planning activities are coordinated.

Lesson #3: Researchers need to understand internal stakeholders.

Marketing researchers, by their nature and their exposure to customers, often focus their recommendations solely on customer requirements and market dynamics. While we think this bias is both good and necessary, it's still a bias and needs to be recognized. When outside research consultants better understand their clients' corporate realities, they can design research and analysis which, while not always ideal (from a market perspective) is optimal because it addresses both customer needs and the strengths and constraints of the client organization.

In our experience, this optimal research is more likely to generate recommendations that are adopted and accepted in the planning process.

One approach that we have used to better attune ourselves to organizational issues and challenges is to conduct one-on-one interviews with internal stakeholders before finalizing our marketing research design. This allows us to understand the context in which research results will be used.

Lesson #4: Planning needs to define measurable success factors

Without upfront consideration of quantifiable objectives, research often has to "back-fill" and create specific objectives after the fact. When organizations take the time to determine how they will measure the success of their initiative - be it a new product or service, communications campaign or brand identity - research can design and implement practical cost effective ways of assessing ROI and serve as a critical feedback loop.

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Doug Church is a founding partner of Phase 5. Doug has a M.B.A. from Queen's University, and has taught marketing and marketing research at the post secondary level. Doug regularly leads strategic research and planning engagements for information technology, health, and government organizations. He can be reached at dougc@phase-5.com or at (613) 241-7555 ext. 101.

Michael Dolenko is a partner in Phase 5's Toronto offices where he works with leading financial services, media, technology, and telecommunications companies. Michael can be reached at michaeld@phase-5.com or (416) 599-7555, ext. 224.