Why is marketing the “obvious” cut? Budget has always been a battle for marketers, who struggle to both justify budget and manage budget.

Face it, budget is a scarce resource. Especially in tough economies. You’re competing with every other part of the organization for dollars. To justify budget, marketing has a two-prong challenge to 1) prove the revenue impact of marketing investments and 2) account for how marketing expends resources. This is the marketing ROI equation – results AND costs. Many marketing organizations focus on results, but to deliver on the full ROI accountability that executives and finance require means one key thing – you must track all dollars spent as well as the cost of people.

What exactly are the new requirements and drivers for budgeting? Let’s take a look:

• Prepare for rapid budget cycles and changes
  Marketers have to adjust their budgets more than any other department.
  
• More budget approvals are required at higher levels
  Your budget business case, on even small expenditures, has to be strategically and financially sound to navigate its way to the right signatures.
• Increasingly complex campaigns require budget collaboration
  Marketers operating in this complete planning, execution and tracking environment require serious collaboration tools, especially for budgeting.
• Increased financial accountability from marketing
  Until you track all costs intelligently and comprehensively, you haven’t reached accountability in the CFO’s eyes.
• Detailed marketing metrics
  Marketers can’t just track gross costs of people and programs, they have to dig into the details for: staff, time, vendors, channel, segment, campaign components and stage, geography, and more.
• Greater reporting requirements
  As marketing deploys more tools, programs, and channels, you generate more data, ergo, more reports.
• Automate marketing budgets for push-button tracking, analysis, collaboration, reporting, and justifying
  Marketers need Marketing Resource Management (MRM) to respond to the new budget environment of frequent budget changes and challenges, greater fiscal oversight, and advanced reporting needs. MRM solutions give marketers complete visibility and control over plans and budgets.
• Justify today’s budget by seeing into the past
  CFOs are accustomed to quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year measures. Marketers who track their budget this way demonstrate to CFOs that they bring visibility, accountability, and oversight into the money they manage.
• Ensure accurate, collaborative budgeting using a top down/bottom up approach
  On demand MRM solutions allow multiple people, teams, departments and geographies to create, view, and modify budgets.
• Track and control spend, day-to-day, to stay on budget and quickly adjust
  Whether you are a large organization with hundreds of programs and dozens of marketers or a small organization on a tight budget and only 15 people, you need to make intelligent, accurate budget decisions.
• Defend the budget by modeling how budget-cut scenarios will impact results
  Even in a downturn, when budgets get cut regardless, you are in a position to protect and promote investments when the upturn comes.
• Know where to cut when you have to
  Sometimes cuts are a must. Marketers should intelligently plan for, and choose, their own budget cuts.

Automated Marketing Resource Management gives you control over your marketing organization’s budget, resources, and future. You may even find budgeting and financial data is an ally to your vision and plan, rather than a tedious task.

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