Outokumpu – Vision for Marketing Data in five weeks

Vision for Marketing Data in five weeks – “We could not have been this innovative on our own”

When the Covid-19 pandemic was starting to look a little brighter in the Nordics toward the end of May, Outokumpu and Avaus decided to run through one more project before the summer vacations. 

The question that Susan Trast, VP of Global Marketing & Brand at Outokumpu, posed to Avaus was:

What data do we have, what data do we need tomorrow, what kind of business problems can data solve and what kind of opportunities can it create? 

“We have been systematically building our digital marketing capabilities for the past two years. We reached the point where we did not only want to talk about the promise of data around the watercooler but really have a vision, a beacon to travel toward, that paints the big picture but also details the path to get there”, says Susan. 

The team to answer these questions included two strategy consultants from Avaus, rounded out with Emma Storbacka, Group CEO. Avaus standard methodologies, such as Data x Algo x Action, were used as the project methodology to ensure efficiency. The approach for the project was intensive and highly collaborative with weekly workshops and knowledge sharing sessions every two to three days. 

“The work progressed faster than I had expected. Avaus’ use of a hypothesis-driven approach gave us the first draft of the Marketing Data Vision already after one week. Systematically refining that hypothesis throughout the project proved to be a very well-functioning structure that, in the end, produced for us an understanding and documentation that can be used for the strategic development of our marketing and for discussions on the leadership team level”, Susan elaborates. 

“Outokumpu has already been taking significant development strides in the area of digital marketing and sales support – their ambition level extends way beyond the hygiene level of marketing automation, search, social, and web. Compared to the enterprise B2B sector in the Nordics overall, Outokumpu is likely to turn marketing into a profit center well before their peers”, Emma says. 

The Marketing Data Vision for Outokumpu starts from business priorities, includes the current state of data, details the target state for capabilities to reach the vision, and sets forth a roadmap for three years. 

“The good thing is that we can start building right away. When we come back to work in August, hopefully with a nice tan, we are able to facilitate the internal development discussion on a tangible level and start the concrete work toward the vision with the prioritised use cases”, Susan explains. 

“The landscape of cloud-based tools available today for data acquisition from 3rd party vendors, algorithmic analysis, and data activation consistently lowers the threshold and reduces the time-to-market for initiatives that contribute to the data-driven development journey. This also makes it easier to calculate the ROI of these projects in the short-to-mid-term”, describes Emma. 

The project was completed in five weeks fully online. All workshops and meetings were facilitated remotely with every participant calling in. 

“We are very happy with the outcome; an ambitious and pragmatic Marketing Data Vision. We could not have been this innovative on our own”, Susan concludes.