Kanban #2: New quality of teamwork in marketing, communication, and sales

The Agile Manifesto describes guidelines and principles for more successful IT projects. The aim is to consistently focus on customer needs and to better fulfil them through changed cooperation and work processes. You can read more about the Agile Manifesto here.

A new quality in marketing, communication, and sales is achieved through these building blocks:

Digitalisation: The consistent digitalisation of tickets, asset management, documentation of work steps, approvals, and interaction between all participants is the nucleus.

Transparency: the tickets can be displayed according to the work steps in the Kanban boards, for example: new jobs, in progress, correction, approval, delivered. By depicting the tickets by sorting them into different categories and issuing reports, each role has full knowledge of the current work status. The structures of the Kanban boards can be flexibly adapted to different tasks.

Self-efficacy: digitalisation and transparency fulfil the prerequisites for independent and effective work processes. The pull principle enables everyone involved to align the workflow with customer needs and to carry out work ever more independently. Find out more in the Kanban blog post: Transparency increases self-efficacy in agencies.

Connecting with customers: the aim of agility is to eliminate blockades and obstacles. Consistent transparency both for the agency and customer means, for instance, that briefings, corrections, and approvals are accelerated and simplified. This transparent collaboration proves successful when all parties involved maintain an attitude and way of thinking described as an ‘agile mindset’. These values are described in the Agile Manifesto as follows: feedback, courage, respect, openness, commitment, focus, honesty, and communication. These values enable cooperation that is characterised by trust and appreciation.

Of course, this enables the work processes and comprehensive marketing and sales projects, such as trade fair appearances, to be managed in teams. The results from the different teams, such as customer invitations, booth design, trade fair construction, brochures, social media or video production, to name just a few aspects, are first implemented in level 1: Operational. In level 2: Coordination, all teams and building blocks are connected in order to ensure a consistent trade fair experience from the invitation to tending to the leads after the trade fair, which was outlined in level 3: Strategy.

The Marketing Management Cockpit (MMC) provides a work platform that enables a new balance through digitalisation and agility:

• Individuals and interactions - more than processes and tools
  
• Growth in marketing and sales - more than comprehensive documentation
• Cooperation with the customer - more than negotiating contracts
• Reaction to change - more than following a plan