Chartis’ word of the year for 2022: Orchestration

Orchestration first appeared in print in 1849 according to Webster’s, the same year as integrator.  (Americanization, anti-vaccination and ornery all debuted that year as well – but we’re too tired to go there…).

The main definition for orchestration is still “the arrangement of a musical composition for performance by an orchestra,” but on the first page of Google results for the past year, the New York Philharmonic is nowhere to be found.  Who is there?  IBM,  VMWare, Databricks and mParticle.  They pair orchestration with cloud, data and container as a way to simplify the description of complex technical processes.

Just as bug, spam and meme have been co-opted by technology, orchestration is poised to move beyond highly technical into a more mainstream vernacular.  

For digital marketers, orchestration is a great word to describe how to get increasingly complex marketing technology solutions to work together and provide a better customer experience that drives business value.

New ways of describing complexity are needed when acronyms start piling up.  Digital marketers in 2021 balance a bunch, including:

•     ABM
•     AI
•     CDP
•     CRM
•     CRO
•     CTA
•     CX
•     MAU
•     NPS
•     QA
•     SEM
•     SEO

Why do I need to think about orchestration?

Before thinking about technology, think about the KPI’s for which the marketing team is accountable.  Do you have customer-focused metrics (i.e. monthly average users, conversion rates of anonymous and addressable cohorts, acquisition cost by channel) and understand how they drive your business performance metrics (revenue, ROAS)?

How do I get started?

1.     Draw a diagram of how customers interact with you, from when they see an ad through shopping, purchase, and customer service.
2.     For each step you mapped out on a customer journey – what are the systems that enable that step of the process?
3.     Do customers have transparency into each step of the journey?  Do your advertising, e-commerce and customer service teams?
4.     If you are like most companies, you can’t yet say “Yes” to all these questions.  And you have a good idea of where orchestration needs to start!

 It’s not unusual today to find a combination of technologies that overlap in one place and customer experiences that reach a dead end somewhere else.  At Chartis, we help clients orchestrate their marketing technology solutions quickly and efficiently.  Orchestrating your marketing technology to match your customer experience is a way to ensure that you are creating value by solving customers’ problems.