Marketers are facing tough challenges, including tighter budgets and shifting business models. Meanwhile, CEOs are demanding that they provide better measurement and visibility across the company. Marketers that fail at these tasks are likely to find themselves without the necessary resources to support their goals. IDC suggests that marketers focus on building more measurement and reporting capability at both the organizational level and at the program level. Program-level tracking helps justify ongoing and new marketing programs. Organizational-level tracking should be an effort to gain a view of measurements such as:

• Marketing budget as percentage of revenue
• Marketing program-to-people ratio, the percent of program or discretionary/variable spending to headcount or fixed spending
• Marketing productivity ratio, the marketing program dollar expended per marketing employee
• Marketing centralization ratio, the percentage of spending under central control