Article at a glance:

The power of a commercial operating system

• Proliferating segments, touch points, and communication vehicles are causing marketers to launch a wide variety of brand, channel, and customer initiatives.
• However, ad hoc responses to proliferation often yield heightened complexity and disjointed resource allocation.
• To avoid these ills, companies need a commercial operating system—a blueprint for consistent, coordinated processes, tools, pivotal roles, and performance management.
• The integration of these elements is particularly challenging, and important. Companies frequently are disappointed when they apply standard tools without clarifying accountability for key decisions, redesign processes without linking them to measurable outcomes, or improve skills without improving processes.