Manpower

Manpower Increases Business Efficiency through Standardised CRM Processes

Eight countries, eight different marketing processes – that is the situation Manpower is facing. The consequences: Disagreement on the priority of leads, as well as difficult benchmarking and communication about best practices.

To create international comparability and prompt learning processes within the company, the North European marketing team spearheaded by Project Manager Tina Hingston wants to introduce consistent, cross-border lead scoring and reporting. To achieve this, the Project Manager gets andweekly’s support as a strategic partner.

The Marketing Landscape at Manpower

Companies in many sectors and regions are affected by the challenging and time-consuming recruitment of skilled professionals. Manpower’s goal is to respond to the global shortage of staff with innovative solutions. ManpowerGroup, with its headquarters in the US and branches in about 80 countries, is one of the world’s leading companies in the human resources sector.

The Group’s core business is the placement of skilled professionals from a variety of industries in companies that want to focus on their operations instead of time-consuming recruiting processes. Moreover, Manpower helps to manage temporary staff shortages and cope with times of peak production by providing qualified human resources. Numerous subsidiaries are part of the Group, including the IT service provider Experis, who we have already supported with their marketing strategy.

Local Marketing Diversity at Manpower Presents Challenges

In each country of operation, ManpowerGroup maintains a marketing team that follows individual approaches to online marketing. HubSpot was established as the all-in-one marketing platform in most national subsidiaries, however, HubSpot know-how and the lead management processes on file vary significantly.

The biggest issue at Manpower is that these inconsistent marketing processes of the national subsidiaries result in inconsistent lead qualification. The same lead that is being categorised as sales ready at one national subsidiary, might be ranked as a marketing qualified lead (MQL) at another location.

This presents Manpower with the following challenges:

•     Lack of comparability

Varying definitions and processes make it hard to compare the performance and effectiveness of marketing activities between the different national subsidiaries. Without consistent standards, best practices cannot be identified and it is almost impossible to replicate successful strategies.

•     Difficult collaboration and communication

Inconsistent definitions repeatedly lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication between marketing and sales teams, especially when they collaborate across borders.

•     Missed sales opportunities

Differing and not always optimal definitions of MQLs and SQLs result in employees over- or underestimating certain leads. In turn, wrong priorities in lead management cause a loss in valuable resources.

Coherent Dashboards for a Seamless Customer Journey

Manpower assigns andweekly with the creation of a CRM strategy and CRM optimisation (HubSpot Marketing Hub: recording leads, lead qualification, lead scoring, reporting). Together with the subsidiaries in the UK and Germany, the project team develops a blueprint for the HubSpot set-up that will be used in all countries in the future. This set-up will subsequently be implemented in one country at a time in order to learn from each implementation. andweekly closely accompanies the process and the kick-offs in each country.

The team analyses the data and the CRM system processes in order to identify and assess deviations, and helps to implement the desired set-up afterwards.

Focus Areas of the Project

• The responsible marketing staff in each country has different degrees of knowledge. Therefore, initial training must be conducted.
• The marketing systems and the type of data processing have varying structures in the different countries, which is why individual approaches are required.
• There are already some existing scoring processes present in a few countries, which must be audited and adjusted for their applicability in the form of a time-consuming assessment. Compliance among the employees is another topic on the list.

Implementation of CRM to Generate Leads              

The andweekly team strategically and systematically tackles the customer’s challenges. To start with, the existing processes of the marketing campaign are analysed and defined. Doing this reveals the best practice for each area. By developing models for the maturity levels of leads, potential customers can be better qualified and prioritised. 

Parallel to this, the team creates stakeholder dashboards in order to transparently represent the marketing performance. To better understand the current situations at the national subsidiaries, the team runs comprehensive tests, which identify strengths as well as weaknesses, and show existing gaps.

Based on these tests, andweekly defines and implements coherent standards which deviate from the blueprint – wherever that seems reasonable. The standards aim to ensure the consistent implementation of the marketing processes, but also respond to country-specific characteristics. The implementation happens gradually and in close coordination with the teams involved on site. This guarantees a smooth transition from the existing to the new CRM process.