What makes cycle time so critical?

Now more than ever in the multichannel, always-on world of business, competitive advantage derives from business process cycle time efficiencies.

Cycle Time Metrics and Criteria for Marketing


The figure above depicts three areas of cycle time efficiency and effectiveness for marketing operations, emphasizing three metrics and performance criteria that most CMOs use when evaluating their marketing investments and partners.

Time to market emphasizes how quickly a firm can identify aggregated or individual customer requirements, develop an appropriate offering, and bring it to market. This speed often requires that a firm master the art and science of collaborative development—what we call solutioneering—and develop a strategy to co-specify a completed offering with existing and prospective customers, as well as key third parties, consultants, and trade partners. For most firms, the product launch has emerged as the defining event for marketing and product management—where investments in new products and market creation become most evident and political. An extensive benchmarking project that we conducted for a large enterprise revealed that a one-day gain in time to market for a major new drug represented $8 million in incremental revenue.

Time to synchronize multichannel resources at various points of purchase and buying opportunities—brand touchpoints—emphasizes how to best facilitate buying decisions. The synchronization of “land, sea, and air” assets of a marketing campaign means that the single voice of a brand spans the entire spectrum of the media and channels used. In practical terms, this synchronization often requires the collaboration of marketing managers and their channel partners as they develop point-of-sale experiences that help customers buy a featured product or service. Often, collaboration now means giving channel partners access to a marketing portal, self-service tools, and final-form marketing content.

Time to customerize emphasizes the technical capacity and logistical capability to transform digital services into brand stories, promotions, and self-service satisfactions for customers. This process may include rapid localization of digital content to a particular culture, language, or ethnic group. It may also include the customization of digital content to a particular distribution channel, season, or marketing opportunity, such as a trade show or exhibition. Finally, it may entail personalization of digital content to individual customers, using data from customer information or accounting systems to personalize photos, illustrations, proposals, order forms, and presentations. Customerization calls attention to the need to maintain consistency in each instance of localization, customization, or personalization.