Say good-bye to multiple spreadsheets, disparate data sets and misaligned marketing plans. The recognized leader in Marketing Performance Management (MPM), Allocadia’s budget management and strategic planning platform is the foundation for operational excellence for marketing leaders and their teams. Powered with data-driven insights, marketing leaders can visualize what’s working to enable greater planning agility. Learn how to run marketing like a business at Allocadia.com.
:moneybag: Version purchased: Allocadia Optimize
:key: Logins are available for Marketing budget holders
Investment Target, with annual and quarterly breakdown. These are the amounts that tie out to the board approved plan. Once the board has approved the plan from the CMO, we will lock down these targets which represent the envelope of money available to each department to plan and forecast.Plans into a hierarchy grid much like you've done in the past within non-head count spreadsheets. Each budget holder can use categories and subcategories as needed to organize their budget, so it makes the most sense for them. This establishes the list of line item expenses they expect to use during the year. If the total planned doesn't equal the investment target envelope, the department does not lose the funds. Once plans are set, we can lock them for the quarter. More in Allocadia docs.Forecasts into these same line items, adding more details and more accuracy as we learn about the specifics of the events/campaigns/expenses.Similar to prior year, if we do not use the full envelope provided to Marketing by the end of the quarter, we will lose those dollars.
The activity planning section will be where you add the tactics of your plan and where can you see quick high level metrics to help you understand your Investment Target and your Plan vs. Forecast. Depending on what view you are in will depend on if you see this data based on the quarter or based on the FY.
In the top right hand section of the screen, you will see a drop down different views. When making changes to your actual activity prior to the Allocadia plan being locked, be sure you are in the plan view. Once the plan has been locked, you must be in the Forecast view to make any changes.
Within the view drop down you have the option to look at your targets by quarter or annually. Use whichever view best helps you run your business.
For common vendors, its important to note that you must use the same upper and lower case terminology, as well as spacing to conform to a standard naming convention if you're trying to have the line items pull under the same vendor in any vendor report. A best practice is to visit the vendor's website and use their exact naming convention. Examples of common vendors we use and how they should be written out for reporting:
Spend Type is as follows, then you will be asked a Y/N on if the event is In person.
NOTE: any line items within a category or subcategory default inherit these details from the parent (category/subcategory) AND can be overwritten at any line item as needed.
Most reporting is done within the Insights tab within Allocadia. Reports are built at the highest level and then use a drill down feature so each team does not have to recreate reports.
There is a button "Request Transfer" that can be used to request funds from another department. Specific approvers have been set up in Allocadia to be notified by email and can approve or deny the transfer. See more details in the Budget Reallocation link above. Note that on the Home page, the transfer will show in red until it has been resolved.
This section is where you can see the highest level of detail.
The reports are broken out in folder format and once you click into the folders, more reports open up.
Target) and what you are forecasting to spend -
Dashboards>2. Pipeline>Quarterly Drill in Details All>Pipeline Plan by Campaign Type - This report allows you to see the ROI data (MQL, SAO, expected pipeline), based on the impact modeller -
Dashboards>2. Pipeline>Quarterly Drill in Details All>Pipeline Plan by Motion - This report allows you to see how your plans are aligned to the FY22 Marketing GTM motions.
You have the ability to create a GitLab procurement issue directly from Allocadia for a given line item. You will not be creating from category or subcategory lines as we need the expense to match the Vendor and the issue approvals.
Here is a video walk through on how to create a procurement issue for vendor contracts.
For Field Marketing, the reviewer/approver will click into the linked Allocaida line item and will review the impact modeller there, as well as have the ability to click into the Marketing issue from your line item, so you will not need to address the ROI question in the issue template. You will however, need to address the justification question on if you're requesting to spend more than $500 per MQL in the procurement issue.
More information on the campaign tag creation can be found on the FMM handbook page.
You may also create a procurement issue for software & that video will be forthcoming.
If you find yourself needing to update a procurement issue template for any of the issues above - please submit an issue for the Marketing Strategy & Performance team, as this must be done through our Allocadia CSM.
If you've hit the GitLab Procurement issue template button and the wrong issue template has been created, not to fear! More info coming soon! But we won't leave ya hanging!
As mentioned above, there is a listing of available FY22 SFDC campaigns to choose from in the detail panel. In addition, we will be sending over the updated forecast amounts into the SFDC Campaign Budget field as it gets updated. If there are multiple line items for a given SFDC campaign, they will be combined for the updated SFDC Campaign Budget.
Please login using SSO, so that all marketing budget holders can sign in easily without worrying about yet another login password.
We will be using CSV transfer files to upload plans from Allocadia to Adaptive. Our finance business partner will be the DRI for this.
We will eventually be able to use an FTP data integration to download actual expenses from Netsuite. In the meantime, we will be using CSV transfer files. Actual expenses will not be available though until after month end close for Accounting, so generally mid-month of the following month.
Insights 📊These dashboards and reports are still being built as we enter more data into the system and understand what we will need. AND you may build your own reports if you'd like.
Strategy♞We are looking into the ability to enter the Corporate (CEO level), Marketing (CMO level) and Team (departmental level) OKRs in Allocadia so that we can connect our spend to our OKRs. This will NOT replace the current use of GitLab issues, but can supplement with reporting and mapping of dept to CMO to CEO OKRs to keep us all aligned.
Today our Field Marketing team is the only team using this function. If you are interested in having this added to your view please open this issue for Marketing Strat & Performance.
We have loaded the past two fiscal years worth of influenced conversion data from campaigns run by field marketing for both the MQL>SAO conversion rates as well as SAO>Closed Won data. We have loaded two FY worth of data to get to these conversion rates given how different our campaigns types were in FY21 due to the pandemic.
If a region did not have a conversion rate for the campaign type (likely because the region did not run that campaign), then the global conversion rate was used. Also, because our MQLs can "skip" MQL status (meaning an SDR can work a lead BEFORE its actually hit our MQL scoring threshold), we used the MQL Inferred Date field to assume MQLs.
Live MQL>SAO regional data can be found here and live SAO>Won data can be found here. These charts will be added to the FMM Dashboard in a future iteration.
The average deal size by campaign by region can be found here (you'll have to refer back to dashboard to change the region if you want to see a specific regions data) are also loaded for calculation purposes. If there were less than 3 closed deals then we did NOT use that deal size information, but relied on the ASP from the TOPO model to fulfull that deal size.
A calculation is then done by then taking into account the MQLs, region, segment data and campaign type that has been given at the line item level in the details panel.
Video walk through (and yes, you know you need to be logged into Unfiltered to see! ;))
Certain groups within GitLab have the ability to create a calendar invite directly from the details panel within Allocadia.
line item level. Meaning you CANNOT create a calendar invite at the Category OR Sub-category level.Is this an in person event?
in person events and sponsorships calendar - regardless of spend type, if it’s an in person event it WILL show up on this calendar.Spend Type (Campaign Type)
Self-Service Virtual Event use the GitLab Hosted Self-Service Virtual Events calendarVendor Arranged MeetingsExecutive RoundtableSponsored WebcastVirtual Sponsorship
External Virtual Events calendarCannot create calendar invite for this Spend Type.While Workshops & Webcasts DO require a calendar invite, we intentionally left the auto create calendar invite out of the plug in. We did this because the GitLab Hosted Zoom Webcasts calendar requires Zoom integration work and is a locked calendar, given the technical work required to run the campaign types. For more information on booking a GitLab-hosted Workshop or Webcast, please visit this handbook page.
The calendar invite is set for the entire day. If you would like the event to be on the calendar for a specific time, then you may go in and manually change the time.
Here is a quick video walk through to show you how the calendar invite gets created, if you're more of a visual learner!
