South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 17 Volume and Issues Obtainable at Center for Business Research and Consulting, IBMAS, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur Pakistan South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies ISSN: 2710-5318; ISSN (E): 2710-5164 Volume 5, No.1, June 2023 Journal homepage: https://journals.iub.edu.pk/index.php/sabas Marketing Analytics Implementation Strategies Exploration for Organizational Transformation at Askari Cement: A Case Study Analysis Dr. Imran Bashir Dar, Assistant Professor, Foundation University Islamabad, Pakistan Muhammad Naeem Khan, Assistant Professor, University of Central Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan Manzoor Ali, MS Student, Riphah International University Islamabad, Pakistan ARTICLE DETAILS ABSTRACT History Revised format: May 2023 Available Online: June 2023 Keywords Marketing analytics, askari cement, case study, organisational transformation Marketing Analytics is a strategic shift where companies need to explore and identify the managerial dynamics of marketing analytics in terms of the implementation strategies that are adapted or preferred by the management for transforming the organisation. This study is about the same in terms of a cement manufacturing company. As much of the research concerning the problem area is focused on IT-intensive companies, this research endeavour would enrich the current research in terms of mapping the marketing analytics implementation strategies for organisational transformation in a developing economy. © 2023 The authors, under a Creative Commons Attribution Non- Commercial 4.0 international license Corresponding author’s email address: imran.bashir@fui.edu.pk DOI: https://doi.org/10.52461/sabas.v4i2.1838 Introduction Marketing managers use analytics on all of these data streams to assess the anticipated business situation. Marketing managers use data about environmental factors that are internal to the marketing discipline, such as projections of sales and product/service business growth, as well as external factors like political changes, to influence the firm's performance. This can pave the way for proactive planning for what is to come (Cain, 1970; Burt, 1978). One of Michael E. Porter's most popular works on competition and strategy, “The five competitive forces that shape strategy” (2008), which establishes the pivotal role of analytics and argues that without it, businesses cannot have the understanding required for competitive forces, provides insight into the significance of proactive preparedness. Keegan (1983) and Johansson and Nonaka (1983), while highlighting the key strategic factors of Japanese companies for their international success, projected the 5th marketing mix, known as a probe. To engage with the competitive forces, various field experts developed strategies in terms of different directions. A probe is a way to gather information on a specific topic and examine it to spot emerging trends. This helps the decision-making process, which is essential for marketing analytics strategies in terms of modulation and efficient reporting (Daser, 1984; Shaikh & https://journals.iub.edu.pk/index.php/sabas mailto:imran.bashir@fui.edu.pk https://doi.org/10.52461/sabas.v4i2.1 South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 18 Hanosotia, 1985). So, there is a need to research to know what strategies the managers have to develop and what initiatives they have to take to proactive preparation for insight-based decision making that could pave the way for new product development (Aljumah et al., 2021), firm capabilities for marketing (Cao et al., 2021), enhancement of marketing analytics strategies (Gupta & Tomar, 2021) for value creation that reaps competitive advantage (Hossain et al., 2021) to untap the competitive-marketing-performance of the firm (Rahman et al., 2021), as there is a clear link between marketing strategy and marketing analytics (Sheth, 2021). So, the reflection of the above is carried forward in terms of the research question below: Research Question: How the marketing analytics is implementation through strategies adapted and preferred by the management at Askari Cement? Case Study As per the guidance from the work of Benbasat et al. (1987), and Yin (2009), which depicts that if the research problem is nascent and at the firm level as well as the research questions require the study of a company in real settings then the most appropriate and reliable course of research method is the case study. Introduction of Case As one of Pakistan's leading cement producers, the first case company was chosen based on its operational and managerial system characteristics. Two plants owned by Askari Cement are located in Nizampur and Wah. Since its founding in 1921, the company has faced a variety of business obstacles and strives to provide clients with superior services and goods in order to leave a lasting impression. The plants' capacity has increased to 1,701,000 tonnes per year. Exports assist Afghanistan, South Africa, and Sudan. Askari Cement has benefited from FWO and NLC membership (Information extracted from the interviews and Company A website). According to a December 2020 Pakistan Stock Exchange press release, Askari Cement is part of FFTHO, one of the top 10 conglomerates by total performance. Organisational Transformation Need & Marketing Analytics The top management and senior officers have acknowledged the necessity for a reliable system for marketing analytics that could direct organisational operations and managerial capabilities to the point where the company might acquire a lasting advantage. The top management recognises the need for experts who can use marketing analytics to change the organisation. Marketing Analytics (MA) requires operational flexibility for future orientation in planning, where past data is significant but past practises call for a new perspective through better and actionable insights from the data-backed reports, which forecast the future opportunities and demands of change management. The highest level of management believed that: “Marketing Analytics is getting more important for every other business and even our competitors and we are looking for future prospects in the cement sector” A senior manager spoke on the significance of recognising future-orientation needs that: “Previously we were working on having our standards and market targets based on the past 3 or more years of performance but now we are looking ahead as markets are changing and one can not only rely on past data” An executive replied: South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 19 “It has been sensed by the marketing and sales department as well as related roles that the data is being under-utilised and lost in many cases. So, the need for having systems for organisational transformation and personnel capacity building for managing the new systems is inevitable” “The old IT policy and processes, the information systems as well as the work routines were costly and the need for transformation was sensed by the Top Management” Consequently, readiness for the upcoming disruption in the industrial sector refers to the transition from current practises to a focus on anticipated market changes and trends. As mechanisms are not yet in place and the organisation lacks personnel who might examine the reports in terms of operational capabilities, this trend is still in its early stages. Contrarily, each manager's meeting would be lacking without the use of an integrated database to reference the reports and the discussion of these reports in terms of managerial issues. The necessity is thus made clear by the managers' demands for data-backed meeting sessions. The senior management most likely instructed the need assessment and recognition step as follows: “The management gives much importance to data-backed decisions and there is not a single meeting that I have attended where readily available data is not presented for future trends assessment” Two senior managers provided the following illustrations of the requirement for diversified reporting and planning: “The importance of marketing analytics is visible now when we need multiple diverse reports for marketing and operations” “Actually, we have to be locally fit and prepare for future challenges and foreign markets” One of the IT professional offered the following perspective on how the transition from marketing intelligence to Marketing Analytics (MA) connects the requirement with planning and readiness: “IT department is fully capable to provide service for it. Marketing analytics is more demanding as real-time data upgrading and relational databases, new reporting techniques and information management, as well as system and cyber security, are needed. Static data is used for intelligence whereas dynamic is used for analytics” The context, roles, and necessity of transformation at organisational level by using MA deploy the readiness for the nest stage that is planning, which deals with developing strategies for the changes (second-order) at organisational level. Figure 1: Silos-Automation to Transformation South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 20 Planning As there was a transition from siloed reporting to integrative reporting and processing mechanisms, the ASKARI CEMENT underwent a planning phase that lasted for around 6 months. The requirements for operational domain are sought from all the heads of departments to have agreement on the end product. Response from the assistant marketing manager: “Before 2004, Askari Cement was manual and many of the departments were using softwares in silos. This was costly as all the departments at various stations were managing IT teams and IT infrastructure on their own and reworking were being done many times due to a lack of integration amongst the different offices and workstations across Pakistan and the Head Office at Rawalpindi. So, the priorities set for the planning phase were integration of the offices across Pakistan for having any kind of report be some clicks away. This took hours of meetings with the vendors of the softwares and different stakeholders, along with the consolidated presentations at the Head Office (FFTHO)” The preparatory phase included talks with Askari Cement's executive management and FFTHO authorities. An executive's preparatory reaction: “There were softwares at the departmental level, but they were not effective and hampered the timely reporting of the status for any ‘metrics’ so planning was focused on the development of an integrated software suite that would enable any of the officers to check the status of anyone factor or interdependent factors by just running some queries or by any other mechanism that would be cost-effective in terms of time, human error, and demand for readily available reports” Primary responsibilities and value-added tasks are "basically" the yardsticks. This demonstrates that both lower and upper management were on the same page with regards to integrated system planning, which could make what has been mentioned in the preceding paragraphs possible. The strategic plan was discussed at length by upper management and the leaders of sales, marketing, IT, and other departments, with particular attention paid to the following points: ✓ Job descriptions at the Marketing & Sales Department (M&S) that involve interdisciplinary work and tight collaboration with the IT, export, and other departments. ✓ The enterprise resource planning (ERP) system requirements of the business and market possibilities for system deployment, consulting, and service level agreements ✓ Using approved central budgeting to provide resources for IT infrastructure, new hires, and a number of training initiatives ✓ Conflicts between departments that are anticipated to occur after and during the deployment of the integrated system; anticipated multi-layered results, advantages, and obstacles ✓ Organizational transformation plan and related marketing analytics and metrics projects and strategies require approval from the FFTHO and must be reported on in a variety of ways. The plan had the proceeding main goals of strategic nature: To equip Marketing and Sales and other cross-departmental groups with the means to monitor key performance metrics: ✓ Value-based integration of logistics, operations, marketing, and other functions allows for proactive customer relationship management planning. South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 21 ✓ Reports in "real time," tailored to the requirements of both annual meetings and impromptu gatherings when choices must be made quickly. ✓ Multi-staged systems for monitoring the finalisation of deals and the preparation for auditing, fraud, and problem identification. Figure 2: Planning Cycle of Integrated System (Major considerations) Initiatives for Implementation: Strategies and Management The ways that marketing analytics and metrics projects are put into action are based on the need for change, planning, and the most important marketing analytics metrics. Concerned Roles and responsibilities that cross disciplines Askari Cement now has seven (7) people in management positions. Together, they make up a full- fledged marketing and sales department (M&S), which has roles that span different fields and often overlap with the Export and IT services departments. The M&S team collaborates closely with IT, who employs a tailored ERP to link logistics, marketing, and other functions as required by issues and routine business. Talking about how the M&S department was made up in detail, which we learned from the interviews, there was: ✓ Manager Sales & Logistics reports to the Assistant Manager Sales & Logistics, who works with the logistics team and other managers to answer sales-related complaints, engages clients by giving them logistics and other services, closes deals, and tracks customers up to third parties. ✓ The general management initiatives, concerns, plans, and corrective actions for the sales and logistics operations—including market competitiveness, price competition, legal challenges, and similar matters—are handled by the manager of sales and logistics. ✓ Manager Marketing focuses on the organization's various brands, branding tactics, social welfare, cost reduction, and clever logistics. ✓ For the purpose of developing sales strategies, the Senior Manager Marketing provides reports to the GM Marketing on regional and area-specific sales, business financial and non-financial performance tracking, and audit preparation. South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 22 ✓ Smart system for managing conflicts, generating sales leads, finalising deals, and tabulating database information for daily approvals. Keep an eye on sales leads for your product and service portfolio as a manager of marketing and operations. ✓ Manager of Institutional Sales managed the intricate and multifaceted B2B operations and business account interactions. ✓ The GM Marketing performed his leadership duties and offered a framework for the integration of diverse functions for comprehensive planning and operational preparation. In “tight coordination” with the M&S department, Manager Export also takes on the export promotions and is given the duties connected to getting ready for upcoming challenges and international markets. It is noteworthy to note that one of the senior managers, when discussing the operational tasks of the jobs outlined above, expressed the viewpoint that “all the duties and responsibilities under each title were incomplete without the support and assistance from the ERP systems”, because they argue that marketing analytics and metrics are both the greatest obstacle and greatest opportunity in the industry right now. This brings up the position of the IT manager, “who was in constant collaboration and contact with the marketing department for delivering the digitalized system platform” for a wide range of business procedures, with a focus on continuous improvement via testing, tweaking, and implementing new ideas. In order to manage the total organisational transformation brought about by marketing analytics, it is crucial for IT and other departments, particularly marketing, to work closely together. Figure 3: Marketing & Sales department (Interdisciplinary roles) Real-time reporting and IS Management's objectives and goals stand out due to the priority they give to reporting based on continuously updated consumer data that is made available to all relevant quarters. In terms of marketing, sales, and logistics, it assisted management in making the business run more smoothly. The direction from management on how to mesh among departments is crystal clear: “Our communication, sales and logistics, and other operations are connected to analytics mechanisms through our customised ERP” Customer Centricity and management priorities for value addition The management representatives in charge of sales and logistics believed that: South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 23 “We at Askari Cement are striving hard to modernise our company structure to make it more customer-centric and based on readily available information to convert it into knowledgeable and decision-supporting reports” GM Marketing spoke about the main areas of concern about marketing analytics and metrics projects: “The opportunity in having new services, better product ranges and business contracts as its the area where much value addition can be done through marketing analytics and metrics” Additionally, some of the significant endeavours in this area include: ✓ Membership in organisations that promote environmental and social awareness, best practises for the industry, and customer relationship management ✓ Customer-centricity is prioritised by management in a number of decisions. ✓ Distributing the benefits of marketing analytics to retailers and consumers, and motivating retailers to boost sales Additionally, the main areas where the objectives and strategies were plugged in include tax management and real-time tracking of sale activities. Price Packages and Customer Life Cycle Business-to-business and business-to-consumer pricing packages are developed utilising integrated reports and data-backed estimates, and then given to clients and dealers based on the customer life cycle and previous business trends. According to projections: “We are working on bifurcating our brands and setting price packages in terms of the customer life cycle (CLC), which is part of our overall market expansion strategy. The CLC report is one of the major documents that is sourced from our modernised IS” The establishment of marketing analytics measures that the business might evaluate, and audit is made possible by the marketing initiatives and strategies. These marketing analytics indicators serve as further benchmarks for the cement industry and lay the foundation for locally available competitive edge sources that may be challenging to replicate. Therefore, progress requires a comprehension of marketing analytics metrics. Discussion Cement manufacturing companies require digital transformation for better firm performance (Adjie Eryadi et al., 2020). So, the firms need to first recognise the need for transformation and link it with performance. This recognition results in the form of deficiency identification that inhibit market competitive advantage. The theoretical paradigm of Rouse (2005) projects the identification of value deficiencies for the organisational transformation by focusing on the processes, people and technology that are needed for the transformation. Rouse (2005) basically talks about the “how” of digital transformation. The digital transformation was recognised by the senior management, which triggered a series of meetings for planning for the digital clone of the current functions and moving towards the new process, which is a challenging situation. For this purpose, Askari Cement's marketing department was at the forefront of this movement as data-driven decision-making was the target of the management, which the backing of actionable insightful reports generated through the utilisation South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 24 of marketing analytics capabilities. This has been argued by Liang et al. (2022) that marketing has to come to the forefront in terms of digital transformation. The management all agreed that, because of the change in the market, the competitors were also looking for ways to build up similar skills (Adjie Eryadi et al., 2020; Dutta & Bose, 2015). It was thought that digitalized services offered through apps and online platforms would have good future prospects and also need to promote export. Literature backs up this point of view and goes so far as to say that functional marketing analytics must be integrated smoothly from the shop to the top management level for business analytics to pay off (IBM, 2012). This is one of the problems the company faces, as it has been seen that the management part of the marketing analytics operations has been more important than the non-management part (engineering). Wheeler (2002) shows that this mistake shows that long-term planning from a broader perspective of marketing analytics is needed, and that holistic and rigorous application is what is needed right now. The Rouse theoretical position says that a deep understanding of digital transformation is a difficult task that needs a long-term view and the participation of all stakeholders. Askari Cement's marketing analytics implementation is characterised by the incorporation of logistics and other cross-functional operations necessary to monitor and analyse customer lifecycle, business history, consumer stage business patterns, multiple report projections, and real- time business account status. These actions were taken in order to lay the foundation for future management efforts and strategies. To better manage business projects, steer change management in the appropriate direction, and shift attention to supply and tracking systems are the primary objectives of the initiatives and strategies. Cement industry case studies by researchers like Adjie Eryadi and Nizar Hidayanto (2020), Trinoverly et al. (2018), Dutta and Bose (2015), and Bhattacharya and Saha (2017) demonstrate this (2015). Limitations and Future Research This research work is extracted from the doctoral dissertation of the first author and an effort has been made to provide as many relevant research studies as possible but there could be any that are left unintentionally. The critique in the literature has been avoided as the area is at a nascent stage and a lot of work is already needed to be done to provide a generalised definition of marketing analytics, as well as define the best practices in terms of the implementation of marketing analytics for organisational transformation. There is a dire need to do further research in terms of retail companies, the banking sector, chemicals and companies working under the conglomerate umbrella. Conclusion It is evident from the current study that marketing analytics implementation strategies for organisational transformation require interdisciplinary roles, reengineering of marketing policies and re-structuring of the marketing department. The recognition of the need for organisational transformation, planning in detail about the major challenges and having future orientation accordingly, and carefully crafted strategies for implementation that pave the forward for customer centricity and readiness in terms of technology, employees and culture are critical. References Adjie Eryadi, R., & Nizar Hidayanto, A. (2020). Critical Success Factors for Business Intelligence Implementation in an Enterprise Resource Planning System Environment Using DEMATEL: A Case Study at a Cement Manufacture Company in Indonesia. Journal of Information Technology Management, 12(1), 67-85. South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 25 Aljumah, A. I., Nuseir, M. T., & Alam, M. M. (2021). Traditional marketing analytics, big data analytics and big data system quality and the success of new product development. Business Process Management Journal, 27(4), 1108-1125. Benbasat, I., Goldstein, D. K., & Mead, M. (1987). The case research strategy in studies of information systems. MIS Quarterly, 369-386. Bhattacharya, S., & Saha, J. (2015, April). High level automation to achieve improved productivity, energy efficiency and consistent cement quality. In 2015 IEEE-IAS/PCA Cement Industry Conference (IAS/PCA CIC) (pp. 1-7). IEEE. Burt, D. N. (1978). Planning and performance in Australian retailing. Long Range Planning, 11(3), 62-66. Cain, W. W. (1970). INTERNATIONAL PLANNING-MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. Columbia Journal of World Business, 5(4), 53-60. Cao, G., Duan, Y., & Tian, N. (2021). Identifying the configurational conditions for marketing analytics use in UK SMEs. Management Decision, 59(12), 2952-2969. Daser, S. (1984). International marketing information systems: a neglected prerequisite for foreign market planning. International Marketing Management, Praeger Publishers, New York, NY. Dutta, D., & Bose, I. (2015). Managing a big data project: the case of ramco cements limited. International Journal of Production Economics, 165(7), 293-306. Gupta, A., & Tomar, K. (2021, January). Enhancing Marketing Strategies and Analytics Through Artificial Intelligence. In 2021 2nd International Conference on Computation, Automation and Knowledge Management (ICCAKM) (pp. 174-179). IEEE. Hossain, M. A., Akter, S., & Yanamandram, V. (2021). Why doesn't our value creation payoff: Unpacking customer analytics-driven value creation capability to sustain competitive advantage. Journal of Business Research, 131, 287-296. IBM (2012). Mid-Market Cloud Computing and Business Analytics Survey: Adoption among content users of Inc. and The Build Network, prepared by Inc. Johansson, J. K., & Nonaka, I. (1983). Japanese export marketing: structures, strategies, counterstrategies. International Marketing Review, 1(2), 12-25. Keegan, W. J. (1983). Strategic market planning: the Japanese approach. International Marketing Review, 1(1), 5-15. Liang, X., Li, G., Zhang, H., Nolan, E., & Chen, F. (2022). Firm performance and marketing analytics in the Chinese context: A contingency model. Journal of Business Research, 141, 589-599. Porter, M. E. (2008). The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy, Harvard Business Review, 01. Rahman, M. S., Hossain, M. A., & Abdel Fattah, F. A. M. (2021). Does marketing analytics capability boost firms' competitive marketing performance in data-rich business environment? Journal of Enterprise Information Management. ahead-of-print. Rouse, W. B. (2005). A theory of enterprise transformation. Systems Engineering, 8(4), 279-295. Shaikh, M. A., & Hansotia, B. J. (1985). Industrial Market Structure Analysis in a Major Multinational Corporation. International Marketing Review, 2(1), 18-30. Sheth, J. (2021). New areas of research in marketing strategy, consumer behavior, and marketing analytics: The future is bright. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 29(1), 3-12. Trinoverly, Y., Handayani, P. W., & Azzahro, F. (2018, September). Analyzing the benefit of ERP implementation in developing country: a state owned company case study. In 2018 International Conference on Information Management and Technology (ICIMTech) (pp. 75- 80). IEEE. Wheeler, B. C. (2002). NEBIC: A dynamic capabilities theory for assessing net-enablement. Information systems research, 13(2), 125-146. Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. South Asian Review of Business and Administrative Studies Vol. 5, No. 1, June 2023 26