Best CPG PMOs Are Driven by Marketing
Often the people who comment on my posts bring tremendous insights into how project management offices (PMOs) are deployed. Commenting on “Execution Is the Only Strategy That Customers See“, Lisa Koslow at koslowmarketing.com discussed how companies in the consumer packaged goods area focus on project management:
Lisa- Completely agree, that a poorly executed strategy is doomed to fail. However, if the development of the strategy itself is not based on fulfilling an identified consumer unmet need, the strategy is not on target and even if perfectly executed, it too will fail. Check us out on http://koslowmarketing.com to see why the basis of everything we do starts with the understanding of consumer needs.
PM411- thanks for commenting. I’d love to hear more from you. From a project management point of view, I believe that most companies have a severe imbalance of marketing/demand projects as compared to infrastructure/supply projects, the latter overwhelming the former. This is mainly because “project management” tends to be the IT department’s responsibility vs. a corporate wide PMO-like function that addresses all projects and serves a governance board of executives. What has been your experience in terms of clients that do a good job of managing/balancing projects? Do they have a PMO function or something like it? How do you get a company to focus more on marketing/demand projects?
Lisa- Bob, It truly is a balancing act. Frequently, it’s the financiers that get in the way of marketing demand projects. All marketers strive for that type of environment, but in these economic times this seems to be taking a back seat to the bottom line. Many of the companies I work with are CPG’s and the PMO function is handled between the Market Research and Marketing teams. They seem to do a really good job.
PM411- fascinating that financiers can block an individual project. That’s why it is so important for a group of top execs to look at whether a project supports a company strategy; one project will often enable another project or strategy that IS extremely high in value and it might be in another part of the company. If the PMO function is handled by market research and marketing teams, do they consider the “supply/infrastructure” side also? Is this PMO presenting projects to a group of executives who represent all aspects of the company? If not, how do they maintain a balance between supply side and demand side projects?
I’m sure there will be more to come from Lisa as she grapples with how PMOs assist in the execution of strategies. By the way I would love to hear more from YOU!
How are you organized to enable execution of strategies? Is a CPG company, given it’s focus on marketing, in danger of overbalancing on the demand side of the project scale?
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Tags: CPG, demand side, marketing, PMO, supply sideRelated Stories
POSTED IN: Best of the Best Practices
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