Being able to tell the future would be a magnificent talent if it was in any way possible, but unfortunately the best any of us can do is to simply try and predict what might happen from a mixture of previous data and imagination. Some people, such as legendary investors like Warren Buffett, are remarkably better at making predictions about future trends than others, to their great advantage. For the rest of us, however, keeping up with the pack and not falling behind is a satisfying enough outcome.
When it comes to project management for marketing, the benefits of future-proofing how your team works are huge. Not only will harnessing cutting-edge trends increase your productivity, improve collaboration and increase insight, they also mean that you will be setting a tone of embracing positive innovation.
Know what you’re dealing with
The first way to go about future-proofing your marketing project management is to understand exactly what’s already here and what changes the future is likely to hold. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, automation and many other improvements are already here in some form or another but will change and improve greatly over the next few years.
Innovation comes from leaning on the future rather than being rooted in the past. So while it can be easier to focus on how previous technologies have developed, when conducting a review on the challenges and opportunities of the next three to five years, it is the future that will have to be explored.
Plan with expansion in mind
European visitors to the US often remark on how well planned the cities are, with grid systems and wide streets that were scaled up as the cities grew even though some were founded more than 400 years ago. This wasn’t by accident – early American urban planners drew up their plans with expansion in mind, so they avoided the bottlenecks, congestion and disorder of their medieval-based European counterparts.
Planning the future of your project management for marketing should be conducted on the same principles. The virtually unlimited possibilities of cloud storage are revolutionizing how business and communication happen. With important project data and documents automatically uploaded to centralized and universally accessible repositories, teams have access to a constant and lightweight “single source of truth” which takes collaboration and dissemination of information to another level.
Create quality data inputs
Analysis and insights into your processes from business intelligence firms who use deep learning for their analysis such as SAP and Oracle can have a huge impact on planning your marketing project management. However, these can only work effectively if the data they receive is of sufficient quality. Not everything produced is useful, and beginning the analysis process by just arriving with terabytes of data that have to be sorted costs time and money.
Even if you’re not heavily using business intelligence at the moment, for your future benefit, discovering which data streams are valuable and how to ring-fence and manage that data will pay off greatly in the future.
Data security
Data is the currency driving huge volumes of the online economy, and wherever there’s value, there are people who want to steal and exploit it. The announcement of massive data breaches with millions of accounts being compromised by the likes of Yahoo and Equifax has become commonplace, and regulatory moves to force companies to take better care of the data they hold can already be seen through the EU’s GDPR regulations.
As such, any future project management for marketing also has to take into account the security and regulation of data that is being used, including that of leads, customers and even that of simple visitors to your website.
Make use of technology
Future-proofing your marketing team means making use of the best collaboration and management tools available. Project management software like Planview AdaptiveWork can help by increasing collaboration and efficiency. To learn more, watch a live demo today.
