Wilkins Consultancy provides marketing and management consultancy services, primarily to IT services, NHS healthcare and manufacturing organisations. This page shows a specific project that defined a marketing space for supply chain software company Industri-Matematik.
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The marketing proposition for the Beyond ERP campaign for Industri-Matematik is based on the assertion that, whilst ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems have been very successful at improving internal efficiency between, for example, finance and manufacturing, they have done nothing to improve external issues such as responsiveness to customers and supply chain fulfilment. Yet this is exactly the business area that is now most in focus - how to get first-class responsiveness to customers' demands even though each and every one is slightly different from all the others. (Hence the use of the Warholesque soup can imagery - it happens that Campbell's Soup is an IMI customer).
ERP's provide the necessary backbone on which a supply chain fulfilment solution can be based, but will not in themselves provide it satisfactorily. Products from companies such as Manugistics or i2 Technologies can be used to provide the planning elements, and System ESS from Industri-Matematik International should be used to provide the integrated order fulfilment.
This solution enables users to maximise their return from their ERP investment, and allows them the achieve first-class customer-responsive order fulfilment.
Once the proposition and positioning against ERP's had been established, two separate but closely-connected communication campaigns were run: to the ERP user base, and to the management consultants, systems integrators, analysts, and partner organisations such as Oracle.
Prior research had shown that companies in the market for ERP or supply-chain software paid high attention to management consultants and systems integrators, usually using them to help chose the packages to be acquired. The research also showed how these consultants liked to be kept informed, and that in the UK there are a relatively small number of influential consultants, who could be addressed very specifically.
The two campaigns consisted of purpose-designed mailings and literature, with telephone follow-up, seminars and one-on-one briefings, all backed by advertising in relevant end-user and consultant-oriented publications. The "Beyond ERP" branding and soup can imagery were carried throughout to ensure a consistently repeated message.
This campaign was directly responsible in for the US ERP and supply chain research organisation AMR placing Industri-Matematik at number three in the world for supply chain systems, and number one in supply chain execution.
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