The ocean of marketing technologies available to marketers today is absolutely massive. ChiefMarTec’s Marketing Technology Landscape and Gartner’s Digital Marketing Transit Map are two of the more popular graphics outlining this huge industry. Having all of these MarTech categories available at our fingertips, along with all of the competing technologies in each category, makes selecting the right technology a paramount challenge for many companies.
There are a number of challenges companies and individuals face when procuring a new marketing technology.
Organizations are often delayed or stumped in deciding which features are most relevant and required to solve their specific business problems. With multiple stakeholders across many departments, mutual agreement is often hard to come by, slowing down the selection project.
Individuals are influenced by vendor-created content, but that usually has a slant towards selecting the vendor who produced it. They scour software review sites to see what like-minded colleagues are selecting. They scan industry and analyst reports, matrices and quadrants, but those change regularly each with differing vendor recommendation, making selection even more difficult.
All of these variables weigh heavy on companies and the people within. They are concerned about making a big decision that will influence their company’s growth, future budgets and possibly even their jobs.
Considering all these variables, how can stakeholders come together to efficiently manage the technology selection process?
Traditionally, teams use a cobbled system of email chains, meetings, and spreadsheets to manage the decision-making process. Using a structured technology selection management tool to manage the process isn’t even an afterthought – it’s an unknown.
Unbeknownst to many, new solutions are now available that alleviate the disjointed selection process, making for a more swift, easy and effective technology selection.
For technology buyers to select the most relevant feature sets, at least two things must happen:
Companies like SelectHub provide pre-built requirements templates and a collaborative platform that lets stakeholders evaluate and prioritize their top requirements. Stakeholders from all departments (marketing, IT, legal, finance, etc.) can come together to make a more sound business decision.
Key benefits to using a technology selection platform to manage your technology selection process include:
Beyond requirements templates and collaboration, SelectHub provides a full platform for vendor analysis and comparisons, demo/pricing requests, RFI / RFPs and proposal management.
We are in an era where marketing departments are about to spend more on technology than IT. And considering all the different categories to select from, improving the process of finding and selecting the right marketing technologies is imperative. Moving away from spreadsheets and emails into a centralized platform is the best way to promote better decision-making around technology selection.
