No leaders or challengers have emerged in the enterprise marketing management
market, which remains in infancy. Aprimo, Oracle (Siebel), SAP, SAS and Unica are
visionaries; the other vendors are niche players. Carefully assess your marketing
requirements against vendor capabilities and EMM vision.
Enterprise marketing management (EMM) is a platform for the entire marketing department,
including all roles, functions and processes. However, few vendors offer the breadth of
functionality to meet all marketing roles and processes. Most vendors have relatively good
campaign management capabilities, as basic campaign management becomes increasingly
commoditized. Marketing resource management (MRM) investments tend to be more diverse,
making it more of a differentiator for enterprises that select MRM capabilities as part of an EMM
platform.
There also are major differences in many of the other capabilities offered, such as lead
management, event management, loyalty management, marketing performance management
and industry-specific capabilities. Carefully assess the underlying architecture, including platform,
database, content/knowledge repository, workflow, business rules and Web services to support
openness, integrability, configurability, scalability and flexibility. Users must assess carefully a
vendor's capabilities, as well as its vision and product road map, against their short- and longterm
requirements for marketing automation. Expect to make trade-offs regarding functionality,
architecture and usability.