Budget season rolls around predictably each year, but it can still cause a huge scramble if you’re unclear about where your marketing spend has been allotted. Let's face it: grappling with the administration of marketing budgets can be a tactical nightmare. Balancing regional budgets, finding funds you can confidently reallocate, and responding to changing business priorities requires a lot of coordination.

In order for a business to evaluate past marketing results and initiate future planning, it’s necessary to make accurate, complete budget information available to all stakeholders. While your staff may be comfortable with old fashioned, static data tools, these just aren’t sufficient for building a truly functional marketing budget process.

problems with Managing Global Marketing BudgetsIt’s a challenge for businesses of any size to create and maintain an accurate, responsive marketing budget. This challenge is magnified for global enterprises. Running dozens of different marketing campaigns across multiple regions can give rise to chaos, as geographically scattered teams each try to maintain their own version of budgeting spreadsheets. Varying currencies introduce new layers of confusion, as do language barriers and differing levels of Excel proficiency.

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Example Marketing Budget Document Living in a Static Spreadsheet

static spreadsheets in a real-time marketing worldSpreadsheets remain a common tool for budget management in many marketing organizations. Especially for global enterprises, spreadsheests can run into dozens of columns and thousands of rows. Individual managers in different parts of the world will then either need to edit the master spreadsheet, or create their own version and save as static documents. While the actual marketing world is constantly shifting in real time, these static documents become archives almost as soon as they’re created.

Another issue with using static spreadsheets is version control. Often, a marketer hijacks the master budget document and reformats it to suit his or her needs. These changes, however, don’t always get shared with the rest of the marketing organization. Budget discipline gets hard to enforce because it is nearly impossible to tie an individual budget back to the master document.

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potential for errorsA recent study by the Wall Street Journal found that 88% of spreadsheets contain errors. In that article, Ray Panko, a professor of IT management and an authority on budgeting practices, points out: “In large spreadsheets with thousands of formulas, there will be dozens of undetected errors.”

Furthermore, even when an initial version of a spreadsheet is shared among managers, each person will make changes as needed. Without software to integrate these disparate versions, it becomes nearly impossible to track overall marketing spend and to establish plans for the future. Most likely, there will be no audit trail for line item changes, and no accountability for ultimate accuracy.

A 2013 Study of 214 Business By The Aberdeen Group

Strained relationship between Marketing and FinanceIn order to work together to establish a marketing budget for the new budget season, the finance department needs to trust the accuracy and accountability of the marketing team’s reporting. A lack of visibility across all marketing activities leads to an erosion of discipline among individual marketing managers as they become accustomed to changing their strategy on the fly, entering new numbers without the pressure of accountability. The relationship between finance and marketing can become strained if the finance staff has to send out numerous emails, trying to reconcile figures from different spreadsheet versions.

Furthermore, the entire process of planning, budgeting, and forecasting becomes foggy as overspending occurs in some areas, while money is left on the table in other areas.

said that working from spreadsheets alone created

problems, due to their inability to respond dynamically to

market volatility.

said that their budgeting and forecasting process is too time-consuming and labor-intensive.

said that spreadsheets alone caused an inability to trace business success to its key

components.

Determining Goals for Your Budget processAs a marketer, you wear multiple hats, so you can’t devote huge chunks of time to budget management. In order to be fast and efficient, you need a reliable, up-to-the-minute overview of marketing funds, allocation, and planning details. However, it is almost impossible to have a complete view of the marketing budget without a process that is simple and collaborative.

To meet the needs of modern marketers and streamline the marketing budget process, it’s necessary to replace manual spreadsheets with a web-based tool that can help you support your people, process, and reporting needs.

You need a tool like Marketo Financial Management, which makes it easy for marketing teams across your organization to collaborate on budgets together.

Let’s dig into the details of how a budgeting tool like Marketo Financial Management can help you forecast accurately, find and allocate budget, and spend on plan.

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Technology Selection overview and ChecklistManaging marketing budgets across teams and regions can be a tactical nightmare. Technology solutions, like Marketo Financial Management, help you get an accurate picture of your marketing spend.

When choosing the right budgeting tool for your organization, here are some features you should look for:

ü Web-based for easy access

ü Flexible structure and process for ease of use and quick ramp-up

ü Dashboard view that provides visibility either by the quarter or by other specified time periods, which gives you a better handle on the status of the marketing spend.

ü Transparency for executive review. Whether it’s a query from the C-suite or an ongoing conversation with finance, a simple dashboard resolves any questions of ROI and improves the overall credibility of the marketing department.

ü Reconciliation of planning with execution. With transparency of both past spending and future projects, it’s possible to measure whether marketing is on-track with its stated goals.

ü Centralized budgets and roll-ups to organize marketing investments by team, brand, or location.

ü The ability to map marketing spend to goals and programs. This enables you to track your marketing programs against your budget line items and map them to your organizational goals.

Individual Budgets Fit owners' Needs and preferencesWhen you look for a tool to help you manage your budgeting process, make sure you find a solution that is flexible in both structure and process, so that individual budget owners can customize it around their own needs and preferences. The more your staff can personalize their budgeting system, the more eagerly they will adopt it. Even if they are reluctant to abandon spreadsheets, the customizable qualities of a flexible, web-based tool will win them over.

Luckily, many budgeting tools use an Excel-like format to ease the transition to a web-based technology. Therefore, your teams will have an easier time adopting the new format.

Good reporting improves your collaborations with finance, and gives you a clear view of your budget.

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Marketo Financial Management Excel-Like Budgeting DashboardThe beauty of leaving spreadsheets behind is that you can now develop your own folder hierarchy, organizing subcategories in ways that are congruent with each team leader’s personal work style. One team leader may want folders that organize by owners or regions; another may feel more comfortable with a hierarchy based on initiatives and messaging.

A robust financial management system allows budget owners and managers to enter the system via a straightforward dashboard, and create their own personal display hierarchy – from the top folder levels, down to individual line items and tags.

With this flexibility, your teams will volunteer more information, like adding in the data points that are vital to them and to their stakeholders. A well-designed structure allows for extra data (such as marketing inquiries) to be integrated, even if those data points are not directly finance-related.

From planning to reportingMake sure you find a solution that has solid reporting and analytics. A dashboard functionality that easily generates reports allows both better planning and a higher level of budget discipline. With cross-team and cross-region reporting that enables stakeholders to view planning in any geographic theater, salient facts are always available to executives and directors. They can refresh the report function and consult real-time facts at any time during the budgeting cycle.

For instance, in Marketo Financial Management, you can create reports to determine plan vs. actual for your entire team, plan to objective, budgeting forecast by team, actuals by month, and more.

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visibility Allows More Intelligent ManagementWith greater visibility comes greater awareness. When every stakeholder is capable of tracking key performance indicators, the conversation about upcoming issues can begin in a timely manner. If a change should take place that requires more expenditure, it will be clear which funds have already been committed, and where there are some extra dollars that can be drawn down. Invoices and purchase orders are reconciled immediately with line items, so there’s no confusion about what has already been spent. It is possible to seize new opportunities in a way that is both agile and responsible, because the consolidated budget remains in the same window of time in which the marketing actually is taking place.

Marketo Financial Management dashboards and reports screenshot showing centralized Budgets and Roll-ups

A budget tool like Marketo Financial Management gives marketers a platform through which to share their goals and objectives with the whole organization.

With an ongoing calendar, the budgeting process itself actually becomes a healthy experience. Budget owners are empowered to truly own and manage their business, because they can configure views and goals to align with their own processes.

ConclusionA flexible, web-based financial management solution allows finance and marketing to be partners as they work to create a comprehensive marketing budget. It enables everyone across regions, teams, and departments to track marketing spend against corporate goals.

Having an effective budgeting solution empowers individual budget owners to configure reporting in the way that suits their unique styles, while providing powerful, pre-structured dashboards and line item tags that are universally accessible. Finally, it ties a clear track record of past spending efficiency with an accurate, real-time window on current commitments, thereby enabling confident planning and forecasting.

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Marketing Software. Easy, Powerful, Complete. Marketo, (NASDAQ MKTO) uniquely provides an easy-to-use, powerful and complete marketing software platform that propels fast-growing small companies and global enterprises alike. Marketo® marketing automation and sales effectiveness software streamlines marketing processes, delivers more campaigns, generates more win-ready leads, and improves sales performance. With proven technology, comprehensive services and expert guidance, Marketo helps thousands of companies around the world turn marketing from a cost center into a revenue driver.

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