Integration is integration no matter where you live on the business spectrum

Wired News recently covered a piece from the Wall Street Journal about Microsoft planning to cut costs by $1 billion annually as expenditure had increased more than income over the last three years.

The interesting content was as follows: "The cuts will come from employee benefit changes primarily from savings from unifying its marketing and advertising across business units, and consolidating the number of outside partners it uses for event planning, direct mailing and other customer relations activities," it was reported, citing a Microsoft spokesman.

Sounds like basic integrated marketing theory but Microsoft saw fit to release news about this kind of integration based on constant assessments of customer relations activities. This is sound reasoning as stock markets react to just this kind of info.

Time spent chatting with clients and potential clients, as well as business acquaintances, invariably makes me cynical as most feel that integration is a once off deal or else is not worth the effort.

In his book Who says elephants can't dance? Louis V Gerstner, Jr talks of the mess that marketing was in when he took over. "As part of the drive towards decentralisation, it seemed that every product manager in just about every part of the company was hiring his or her own advertising agency. IBM had more than 70 ad agencies in 1993, each working on its own, without any central coordination."

Sounds crazy and could be the storyline in a horror movie but in reality, more companies than you think are in exactly the same position, albeit somewhat smaller than IBM. The reasons why are numerous, but some critical factors include turf wars, ego and insufficient management from on top.

The PR won't talk to the ad people and the ad people won't talk with eventing because each has their own sphere of influence. Then there are people that figure they can do it all, and sitting at the top are those with authority who simply sign budgets once a year.

Gerstner goes on, "It was like 70 tiny trumpets all tooting simultaneously for attention. A single issue of an industry trade magazine could have up to 18 different IBM ads, with 18 different designs, messages and even logos."

Changing this kind of problem obviously needs buy in from top management but there are too few agencies that really sell an integrated package customised for a specific client's needs and demands.

With companies and firms and much lower levels of the business hierarchy it would be beneficial to run regular checks on levels of integration. Integration is challenging and beneficial, but not necessarily costly. All it actually takes is communication. Simple really, but integration is integration, no matter where you live.