This week, I’ve welcomed aboard a recruitment manager at ITG – our first person wholly dedicated to this task. In the past, recruitment has been handled by individual department heads in consultation with HR.

There was nothing wrong with this system, but we’ve experienced such strong growth in the recent past that I felt we needed a dedicated resource to handle it.

In the past six months, we’ve taken on another 91 employees, while we’ve also bought an eCRM company, ITG Creator, which gave us an additional 125 staff (and growing).

Increasing automation

We now employ over 530 people – and are growing fast. The reason is that we appear to be reaching the tipping point when it comes to marketing automation.

Marketing departments have been talking about it for years – and many have dabbled with asset management software or otherwise dipped their toe in the digital ocean.

More pioneering companies have embraced it wholeheartedly, including of course many of our long-term clients, including M&S, Sainsbury’s, Puma, Heineken and Renault.

The reason is simple – the marketing landscape is getting just too complex to manage with manual processes such as Excel and emails.

Advantages of MRM

Marketing automation not only increases the speed and efficiency of your activity, it gives you full visibility of your operation, making you more agile and helping inform future marketing plans.

It also joins up different areas of your operation, including artwork creation, asset management, campaign planning and stock management. All of these are easily handled through our Media Centre MRM platform.

But because we don’t just sell software ¬– we provide a full range of marketing support services, including artwork creation, print management and strategic and creative strategy – every new client means a new account team.

Hence the need for a dedicated recruitment manager to seek out the best people possible to fill these teams. It doesn’t matter how good your technology, or how extensive your services, if you don’t have people with the right knowledge (and above all, the right passion for customer service), you’re not going to give your clients the level of service they deserve.

Until next time

Simon Ward

About Simon Ward

Simon Ward ITG – Simon is the founder and CEO of pioneering technology-led marketing company, Inspired Thinking Group (ITG). ITG delivers best-in-class marketing software, procurement and studio services to dozens of blue-chip clients, including Audi, M&S, KFC, PUMA and Heineken.

Simon Ward SP Group – Prior to ITG, Simon founded SP Digital in 1998, and in 1999 bought SP Print to form SP Group, creating innovative marketing and point of sale displays for some of the world’s best-known retailers, including M&S, Sainsbury’s, Holland & Barrett and Calvin Klein.