Leopard helps the fastest-growing division of IBM better manage its marketing communications program—and prove it.

THE PROBLEM:
Need to improve efficiency and productivity related to the management and distribution of marketing communications materials

THE PLAN:
Use a hosted, Web-based marketing asset repository to get the right collateral to the right people more quickly, easily and inexpensively

THE RESULTS:
Lower costs, better control over brand identity, a 400-percent increase in on demand collateral printing, and the capability to execute global announcements in realtime

As the largest and fastest-growing division of IBM, IBM Global Services provides consulting and technology services to customers around the globe in virtually every industry. In 2002, IBM Global Services earned US$36.4 billion, nearly 45 percent of all IBM revenue. Despite its size, IBM Global Services strives to keep its marketing budget from spiraling with its growth—and the marketing team is under constant pressure to find better, faster, less-expensive ways to do its job.

For IBM Global Services, marketing assets, such as data sheets, brochures, white papers and case studies, play a critical role in sales support. Yet, the approach for management of those assets left room for improvement. The IBM Global Services Marketing Communications team knew there had to be a better way to create, manage and distribute their assets for maximum impact.

Understanding THE PROBLEM

The challenges faced by IBM were significant:

• The lack of a single, easy-to-use worldwide repository for approved messaging led to unnecessary reinvention and inconsistency.
• Sales support materials were created by multiple agencies and internal teams.
• Collateral revisions required the re-creation of source files as the originals were not always readily available.
• Once created, marketing communications materials were spread across five different databases, some lacking even basic search capabilities.
• Printed collateral had to be ordered through a central corporate production system, resulting in long cycle times, mounting storage and disposal costs, and the inadvertent distribution of outdated materials.
• Timeliness of collateral distribution was even more problematic. Prospective customers were not receiving the collateral they needed in time to support their buying decisions.

As a marketing communications strategy and services agency, Leopard fully understood the obstacles that IBM faced in trying to manage its marketing assets efficiently and effectively while keeping costs down. Through its long history of working together with IBM, Leopard was also well versed in the ins and outs of marketing communications within IBM, and was in a perfect position to help IBM Global Services implement a solution to resolve its marketing asset management challenges.

Leopard worked with IBM on a staged implementation of Leopard em™—then called Asset Manager—a hosted, Web-based marketing asset repository developed specifically for business-to-business (B2B) marketers. Unlike other marketing resource management solutions, this hosted solution complements existing IBM marketing communications processes without placing additional demands on internal resources. It was deployed quickly and securely, which enabled IBM to start realizing benefits in a matter of weeks. The Web-based interface is so easy to use that user and administrative training could be done in the course of a 90-minute phone call. The solution scales rapidly, from adding storage on demand to accommodating unforeseen business opportunities. And our affordable monthly fee enables IBM Global Services to fund it from savings created elsewhere in its existing collateral budget.

Leopard em streamlines the process of managing marketing assets through an easy-to-use interface that enables authorized users to:

• Upload and download assets (with thumbnail previews, making it easier to identify the right file the first time)
• Categorize assets in ways that are specific and meaningful to their business
• Store all source and final files associated with an asset
• Link related assets, such as imagery, design templates and translations
• Search or browse for assets
• Eliminate out-of-date marketing communications materials
• Maintain version control
• Track and manage photography usage rights
• Distribute assets to constituencies via the Web
• Print precisely what they need when they need it
• Measure and report on the usage of their marketing communications deliverables.

For IBM Global Services, Leopard em has dramatically improved its ability to manage and distribute marketing assets. It has replaced all other marketing communications asset repositories, reducing the costs of posting to and maintaining multiple systems, and making it easier for the sales force to quickly find what they need to support a sale. Managing collateral updates, revisions and the many translations required for its global marketing operations is simpler and faster as well.

It now takes days rather than months to scale up to accommodate new marketing communications programs. For example, when IBM acquired a major consulting firm, the IBM Global Services team needed a way to rebrand, manage and distribute new supporting marketing collateral quickly and efficiently. In two weeks, Leopard had all of the new materials and supporting data loaded into Leopard em—nearly doubling the number of assets in the repository—making them available for world-wide distribution on the morning of the announcement, a feat that would have been nearly impossible with the old system.

Print-on-demand orders for IBM Global Services collateral grew by more than 400 percent in the first year, adding up to a significant cost savings for the team. Users can request hard copies of the latest version of any piece of collateral in the exact quantity needed, with no waste. Orders can be personalized for each customer with the name and contact information of a specified IBM representative. IBM can also report on collateral usage, giving it the ability to evolve marketing communications plans in realtime.

Together, Leopard em and Leopard's extensive experience as an IBM agency partner helped IBM Global Services achieve its overall goal of increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of its marketing communications program. From asset creation to distribution and measurement, the IBM Global Services team is better able to ensure brand consistency, contain costs, support sales efforts and measure the results.