Marketing Resource Management Roundup: Gemini, MarketingPilot, Strategic Competencies

Microsoft Dynamics CRM's second quarter Gemini release is right around the corner and brings with it the vendor's new "Microsoft Dynamics Marketing" branding concept. Gemini will integrate elements of MarketingPilot, a 2012 acquisition that's expected to put a full spectrum of integrated marketing management (IMM) tools - including collaborative project and digital asset management, social media, analytics, and campaign management - with Dynamics CRM Online via a new connector.

In a March blog post, Microsoft Dynamics CRM MVP Leon Tribe discussed the MRM functionality of MarketingPilot (a.k.a. Microsoft Dynamics Marketing), planned for the Gemini release. Dynamics Marketing features will be available to CRM Online customers first, though as a separate application geared toward midmarket and enterprise customers. Dynamics Marketing will likely have a place in the on-premise world as well - the question is when.

In Are You Ready to Add Integrated Marketing Management to Microsoft Dynamics CRM?, MSDynamicsWorld.com covered the fact that IMM focuses on planning, budgeting, and spending by marketers with a goal of executing campaigns that directly tie marketing investment to business results. IMM and its related competency of marketing resource management (MRM) are becoming "mission critical areas for most enterprises," says Brad Koontz, director of product marketing at CustomerEffective in Greenville, S.C. "Most people in the CRM space have heard the claim that either now or in the near future, a CMO's IT budget will exceed that of the CIO."

To companies that will be getting ...