Brand Owner Solution Lessons Learned, Parts 8,9 and 10

8. Design 'Design' Projects

All brand owners start with a few products, and then the market begins to ask for more. First it's women's sandals and then men's sandals and kid's summer shoes. It's only a matter of time. This is great and exciting, when the force of inertia sets in and your brand starts to roll as if on its own. But it also costs time and money to design new products, or even new brands, with all of the attendant packaging materials, artwork, etc.

When this begins in your market, take the time to start putting your design projects into the enterprise system where at the very least they can be properly tracked; or, in the best case scenario, they can be quantified and measured. How much does it really cost to bring a new model to market, from original idea to a prototype ready for production run?

If you find yourself using a lot of spreadsheets to organize, track and measure brand initiatives then it's time to act and start using your enterprise suite for project management and measurement.

Apart from using the project to manage the work, it should also be a repository of the costs associated with product development. After all, if you have to sell 10,000 pairs of a sandal to break even, you have your work cut out for you. Don't wait until it's too late to find out where the costs end and the profits begin. An integrated enterprise suite enables the aggregation of important financial information at the project level, and you should be measuring your efficiency here also.

9. Share Data

Be prepared to share data:That would be an important message in Brand Ownership 101, if such a course existed. It may be inbound, like EDI transmissions from a large retail store; or it could be outbound, like a file of sales orders to fulfill sent to a 3PL partner. There are more possibilities in this area than we can name or enumerate in this paper, but suffice to say that you must be prepared as a brand owner to manager serious data transfer from and to all points in the brand eco-system.

Couple of key points: You will need an EDI partner to work with you and through your enterprise system. You may also need another access point to your enterprise suite, for non-EDI transactions, and for this we would strongly recommend web services, if at all possible.

The subject of data sharing also brings to mind the need for partners/brokers/dealers, vendors and customers to have access to your enterprise suite. Not the entire suite of course, but those records to which they are privy. This might sound like a 'nice to have' but for a brand eco-system where communications and collaboration are the life blood, an enterprise suite optimized for partners, vendors and customers is really a requirement. Receiving a sales order via the fax machine is ok when you have a few orders a day. But when you have hundreds of orders and each one requires negotiation and collaboration with the eco-system, and executive approval in many cases, the fax machine breaks down.

Maybe you think your brands aren't to this point in the sales cycle yet, but it won't be long. If you walk into the office one day and see a stack of sales orders on the fax machine you are in trouble and it's going to take some time and energy to get out of it. First you will need to train partners and customers in using your technology to place order or request quotes. Then you will have to work through all of the logistic issues with their setup. You would be better off coming to the realization early on that enabling your brand eco-system to access your enterprise suite right from the beginning is a better idea than hiring high priced accounting talent to re-key sales orders.

10.  The Brand Eco-system, or Eco-system as Brand?

It is normal for brand owners to think about their brand as distinct from the 3rd party companies and business processes that bring it to market and put it finally in the hands of the end user. But be careful not to work at odds with your mission to create a known brand of value in your market. Each link in the chain from design project to manufacturing, logistics, warehousing and distribution adds value to the chain, and it is this chain that creates and supports the brand. Keeping those links tight and strong is really key to long term brand viablity.

In this short white paper we focus on the system and business needs for brand owners. Our conclusion, remarked throughout, is that successful brand ownership requires managing and collaborating with a brand eco-system of customer, suppliers, manufacturers, partners, and third party logistic providers to provide brand value to the end user. The level of management and collaboration required for brand management bespeaks the need for an integrated enterprise suite wherein you have complete visibility into your brand's many moving parts. This is not only a good idea, but a necessary one. We have also argued that the Internet with its sweep and ubiquity is natural ally of the brand owner, and they should use it at every step.

Best wishes and we'll be looking for your brands, soon.