Marketing Resource Management (MRM) – Say Goodbye To Error-Prone Manual Marketing Processes

This article shows common pain points in campaign planning and budget planning. You will learn which widespread marketing practices lead to significant manual workload and frequent errors that cost marketing teams unnecessary time. We show you how Marketing Resource Management software helps you uncover and solve such issues.

Marketing Processes Don’t Have To Be Time-Consuming!

Are you frustrated by the many manual processes and workflows in marketing? Would you like to save time instead of manually searching for relevant information buried in countless chats, emails, digital whiteboards, PowerPoint versions, or Excel files — and then spending hours consolidating everything? Not to mention the errors that result, which in turn require even more time to correct. Then we have the solution: Marketing Resource Management software!

Whether B2B or B2C — marketing campaigns are becoming increasingly differentiated and more precisely targeted, with higher demands for personalization and multichannel orchestration. With rising complexity, marketing specialists often reach their limits due to numerous manual process steps and wish for more efficiency. As in many other areas, the answer is: software and automation. More specifically: Marketing Resource Management.

MRM tools effectively address these challenges in marketing operations and enable significantly more efficient marketing management and marketing operations.

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But which manual working methods are actually responsible for this inefficiency? And what exactly does an MRM solution do differently — and how?

Campaign Planning Without Central Campaign Collaboration Objects?

From a Single Idea to an Avalanche of Documents

Does this sound familiar? Your team agrees on a new campaign, goals are defined, tasks are assigned, and the work begins. Everyone jumps in — the campaign is planned, the first documents appear, initial feedback rounds start. As the concept evolves, new materials are created. Questions arise, discussions occur across various channels with different stakeholders, approvals have to be managed individually, and results end up scattered across meeting minutes, PowerPoint decks, Excel spreadsheets or group chats. Later, additional documents and files emerge for required campaign components such as selection logic, assets, incentives, and more. All this information must then be manually consolidated into one final briefing — including links to whiteboards, files, chat logs, or documents. Naturally, the error rate is often high.

Lack of Centralization, High Error Risk

What is missing in this highly manual process? Exactly: jointly created and collaboratively edited campaign objects stored in a central location. Throughout the development process, all information could have been logically integrated and connected here.

A similar issue arises when tasks need to be executed by different contributors — from planning, to conceptual work, to briefing, to implementation and quality control. Everyone uses their own individual “way of working”. Tasks get done, but results and information end up stored in different places and in different file formats. Various files are populated by contributing departments and then sent to recipients in marketing. Additional channels or tools are used for visual materials and layouts.

Searching Instead of Seeing

In particular, approvals are documented in different channels and formats — often only by individual people. Usually, there is no traceable documentation of revision loops or approvals. Queries about the latest version and status are part of daily operations.

Again, what’s missing throughout the process are centrally created campaign objects with associated task checklists. Why? To ensure that every team member can see the current status of tasks and documents at any time — without time-consuming manual searches.

The Solution: Central MRM Campaign Collaboration Objects

You can work significantly more efficiently and intelligently with an MRM solution and centrally created campaign objects, which can be categorized by campaign type and linked hierarchically to sub- or parent campaign elements. This makes relationships between campaigns and their associated activities immediately visible.

Depending on the campaign type, you can define task checklists for your team to ensure that all necessary tasks are completed for every campaign. This allows all team members to see the status of all (or only selected) tasks and the overall campaign progress at any time.

A major advantage is that communication history and versioning of all documents are centrally attached directly to the objects. This means everyone can work together on shared files directly within the campaign objects — with zero search effort.

Budget Planning in Decentralized Documents With No Link To Campaign Objects?

Does this sound familiar? Marketing teams and departments responsible for different channels are asked to plan their budgets for the upcoming fiscal year. Integrated multichannel initiatives and international organizational structures often make it difficult to clearly segment budgets. As soon as multiple international markets need to be planned individually, data decentralization increases dramatically. In many cases, numerous people are involved in planning. As a result, planning figures are used across various channels, levels, formats, and levels of granularity — in the worst case, even with different terminology for the same items.

And because budget planning often involves not only marketing but also financial controlling, the result is a large number of small-scale planning processes and countless planning documents.

Manual Consolidation: Errors Guaranteed

Next, results are submitted, manually consolidated or transferred into further planning files. The error probability is extremely high. Whenever changes occur — which happens frequently — extensive revision cycles begin, as numbers must be updated manually in multiple places.

However, the largest volume of manual effort begins once marketing measures start and the first “actual” costs must be recorded and allocated to the appropriate initiatives and channels. Actual costs must be compared and monitored against the planned budget.

The Solution: Budget Planning With Central MRM Campaign Collaboration Objects and Actual Cost Integration

Here, too, your budget planning and financial controlling become significantly more efficient and smarter with an MRM solution and centrally created campaign objects. Why? Because they can be categorized by campaign type and linked hierarchically.
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With MRM, you can define company-specific cost types and cost centers and assign them to all planned marketing activities. The underlying object hierarchy allows budget allocation at all hierarchical levels. This ensures that your planning figures remain up-to-date and visible at a glance. Approval workflows for specific budgets — for example, by marketing or controlling leaders — can be configured directly in the MRM system (e.g., in Marmind).

Budget Status at a Glance

Once actual costs arise, they are often recorded or booked in SAP systems. Interfaces between your MRM solution and SAP enable actual cost imports — ensuring continuous reconciliation with planned budgets. With the budget overview in an MRM solution, you always know whether you are under, over, or within budget — both at the individual initiative level and for the overall budget.