Palto Alto, Calif. (May 27, 2009) – The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council today announced it will launch a new research project and think tank dedicated to driving best practices in marketing supply chain management in the $1.5 trillion marketing services sector. This initiative will assess the effectiveness of spend, procurement processes, agency resource utilization, the sourcing and delivery of marketing consumables, carbon footprint reductions, workflow management, overall supply chain performance and the reduction of waste and cost.

Previous research by the CMO Council reveals that nearly 50 percent of 400 global marketers surveyed in a recent Calibrate How You Operate study believe that streamlined marketing operational functions will result in more targeted, focused and precise communications. Yet, only 13 percent of marketers control global procurement and vendor relations and only 12 percent consider demand and supply chain synchronization to be part of the marketing operational mix.

This disconnect between marketing supply chain and marketing performance has prompted the CMO Council to form a new center of excellence, the Marketing Supply Chain Institute, designed to drive best practices and thought leadership in marketing supply chain management worldwide. The Marketing Supply Chain Institute will be a dedicated knowledge center and think tank focused on benchmark studies, cost audits and competency assessments, content aggregation, report publication and syndication, peer-to-peer interactions, best practice development, vertical industry analytics, and global models and frameworks for strategic sourcing and supplier management.

The CMO Council will engage in a comprehensive audit to benchmark, analyze and provide a scorecard on the state of marketing supply chain management practices, as well as highlight cost-savings, efficiency gains, sustainability benefits, operational controls and risk reductions to be achieved through streamlined marketing consumables supply chain management. This first-stage global study – Define Where to Streamline -- will be undertaken in collaboration with NVISION™, the Marketing Supply Chain Group of North American Corporation. This market engagement audit will invite senior marketers to undertake a comprehensive online assessment of the marketing supply chain structure, operational dynamics, effectiveness and value. http://www.marketingsupplychain.org/survey.php

"The challenge marketers face today is how to manage, streamline and automate a highly complex system that can include hundreds, if not thousands of individual marketing materials and consumables," said Mike Perez, Vice President of Sales, NVISION. "Streamlining and automating, even outsourcing, the function of managing marketing consumables is just one part of the optimization process. Determining the forces and factors that can impact the entire marketing supply chain can allow marketers to reallocate savings into vital marketing programs that drive the bottom line."

The CMO Council will also use NVISION’s proprietary NDEPTH™ auditing tools to conduct two in-depth benchmark studies with member companies in the retail and financial services sectors. This fact-based economic assessment will review each company’s needs, requirements, expenditures and processes in sourcing marketing consumables and provide detailed analysis of where significant costs can be eliminated, productivity and efficiency realized, and enviro sustainability benefits gained.

Areas of investigation and analysis to be undertaken by the CMO Council Marketing Supply Chain Institute include:

• Strategic value and role of marketing supply chains
  


• Supply chain responsiveness, quality and turnover
  


• Level of alignment with business needs and objectives
  


• Emerging marketing supply chain demands and priorities
  


• Marketing supply chain execution effectiveness
  


• Marketing-procurement group integration dynamics
  


• Spend analysis and ROI tracking
  


• Supplier performance measurement
  


• Supplier collaboration and integration
  


• Supplier network or portal use
  


• Contract management
  


• eProcurement


• Procurement outsourcing
  


• Sustainability initiatives across the supply chain
  


• Compliance and social responsibility factors
  


• Level of risk and vulnerability in the marketing supply chain

To learn more about the Marketing Supply Chain Institute, the Online Global Sourcing Center or to participate in the Define Where to Streamline audit, please visit www.marketingsupplychain.org.

About the CMO Council
The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council is dedicated to high-level knowledge exchange, thought leadership and personal relationship building among senior corporate marketing leaders and brand decision-makers across a wide-range of global industries. The CMO Council's 4,500 members control more than $125 billion in aggregated annual marketing expenditures and run complex, distributed marketing and sales operations worldwide. In total, the CMO Council and its strategic interest communities include over 17,000 global executives across nearly 100 countries in multiple industries, segments and markets. Regional chapters and advisory boards are active in the Americas, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East and Africa. The Council's strategic interest groups include the Coalition to Leverage and Optimize Sales Effectiveness (CLOSE), Customer Experience Board, Marketing Supply Chain Institute, and the Forum to Advance the Mobile Experience (FAME). More information on the CMO Council is available at www.cmocouncil.org.

About NVISION
NVISION is a leading Marketing Supply Chain Specialist, an exclusive offering of North American Corporation. NVISION works with companies to simplify and organize tangled web of agencies, vendors and distributors – creating a customized Marketing Supply Chain Solution. Over the past five years, NVISION has saved over $42,000,000, an average of 17% in Marketing Supply Chain costs, for leading fortune 500 corporations. www.nvision-nac.com