TMD Friction reduced its manual data imports into Excel by 95% with BrandMaker
Customer:TMD Friction
Industry sector: Automotive supplier
Employees:Approx. 5,000
Challenges:
TMD Friction, a subsidiary of the Nisshinbo Group, is the world leader in automotive brake pad technology. With a daily production of 1.2 million brake pads, the group is one of the world’s largest manufacturers. TMD Friction is the world market leader in the original equipment sector of the automotive and brake industry, but also supplies the spare parts market. TMD Friction’s core competences are brake pads for passenger cars, commercial vehicles and racing applications. The company enjoys the trust of the top-selling brands in the automotive and industrial sectors, who appreciate its effective, reliable, and safe brake solutions.
“BrandMaker has brought us a big advantage – an enormous gain in efficiency. Now we have a real-time view of all activities as well as planned and already completed campaigns worldwide, instead of having to look at many individual Excel files.”
Marketing Managers use the tool daily
employees individually exported their individual data
employee does this much faster for everyone with the central data import feature of BrandMaker
As a leading manufacturer of disc brake pads, TMD Friction serves two types of customers around the world: in the OEM sector, the large, well-known automobile manufacturers; and on the other hand, workshops in the aftermarket. TMD Friction’s Regional Marketing Managers are responsible for managing their local marketing process and must effectively align global programs with their local markets. Marketing is therefore faced with the particular challenge of having many different Regional Marketing Managers around the world planning their budgets for different territories, different cultures, and in different currencies.
Before the implementation of the BrandMaker solution, the budget planning was done in Excel. Each Marketing Manager created and maintained his own Excel file. This resulted in many redundant files, manual effort, inconsistency and inaccuracies due to human error. In addition, the global marketing department had to invest a great deal of time and effort in merging the files to obtain a complete view of the entire world. For these reasons, TMD Friction was looking for a system that would be accessible to all Marketing Managers at any time and from anywhere, based on their roles, and where data could be centrally stored and edited.
The decision to adopt the BrandMaker Finance & Budget Management was made byTMD Friction 2017 for two main reasons:
1. Compared to the competitors, who were all more focused on campaign planning, the BrandMaker solution included sophisticated functions for flexible and individual budget planning, and allowed role-based access to files as well as an overall view of all planning worldwide.
TMD Friction has been using the BrandMaker Digital Asset Management since 2016. All digital assets that are published are made available through this functionality. The system is used intensively by marketing colleagues as well as by sales and management worldwide. In order to ensure seamless marketing processes, the company decided to stay with one platform.
TMD Friction’s Regional Marketing Managers are dependent on their global marketing colleagues to provide them with the marketing materials and programs they need. On the other hand, they must meet the needs of their local stakeholders, whose needs are always greater than the resources available.
The goal is to quickly and effectively tailor global programs to local markets and efficiently manage limited local budgets. To achieve this, regional managers need to know which programs and materials are available, when and how they can adapt them quickly and efficiently based on their needs. They also need to control their budgets, make adjustments on the fly, and have real-time access to relevant data forlocal decision-making.
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In 2017, TMD Friction implemented the BrandMaker Marketing Finance & Budget Management as a central, common platform for budget management in all marketing departments worldwide and integrated it into the existing IT landscape. Since then, usability has been continuously improved and new features and functions have been added.
One very important feature is BrandMaker’s interface to Excel, which allows data to be imported quickly and easily. Where 25 employees used to be busy exporting their individual data, this task can now be performed by one single employee for all of them via the central import – which is significantly faster and much more accurate.Instead of exclusively monitoring costs with BrandMaker, TMD Friction also uses the solution to track marketing activities with Marketing & Campaign Planning. Now, all activities can be displayed at a glance instead of in many individual Excel tables.
TMD Friction uses the BrandMaker Finance & Budget Management as well as Marketing & Campaign Planning to create standard reports and provide uniform diagrams and charts for presentations. About 20 colleagues from the regional marketing teams use the solution every day. In addition, colleagues from sales and management also access it to get an up-to-date overview of activities. New sales organizations and offices around the world will significantly increase the number of users.The automatic import of invoice data has proven to be very successful. Through automation, TMD Friction saves a lot of time and significantly increases its data integrity. This, along with real-time visibility, enables better statements, more informed decisions, and a more meaningful use of budget.
BrandMaker’s Marketing Operations solution gives TMD Friction’s Marketing Managers agility and consistent real-time visibility into all key performance indicators they need to manage their budgets and demonstrate marketing’s contribution to the effective and efficient development of the business.The team gains efficiency by eliminating time-consuming manual tasks and duplication of effort. Equally important, the options for access to data offer a decisive advantage, especially for regional Marketing Managers around the world. Whether they are located in Moscow, Dubai, Shanghai, Sao Paulo, or Bucharest, the BrandMaker infrastructure allows them direct access to data they would otherwise have to wait several hours for. Colleagues are able to work simultaneously on one platform, which saves time, increases data quality and delivers precise findings faster. As a result, marketing budget managerscan better present their expenditures and opportunities to the finance and sales teams.Global marketing management is facilitated by real-time insight into local spending down to the regional and local levels.
In the past, working on many files has meant that budgets were not fully utilized due to inaccuracies. By using the BrandMaker Marketing Planner, this problem was completely eliminated. Since the implementation of the solution, resources have been reduced by more than half, while the number and quality of activities have been continuously increased. In addition, the minimization of Excel imports by 95% has led to a significant reduction of manual effort.
TMD Friction plans to extend the BrandMaker Marketing & Campaign Planning to external user groups such as customers and partners in the future to inform them about campaigns. Potential access concepts and scenarios are already being considered together with BrandMaker.