Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

Marketers are in agreement; enterprise marketing platforms are critical for managing integrated, cross-channel marketing programs and improving marketing's efficiency. But firms that put a lot of time and effort into selecting a marketing platform vendor often flounder during the technology-implementation stage. To better understand marketers' implementation challenges and identify ways to avoid them, Forrester spoke with 47 marketing and IT executives directly responsible for their companies' implementation of the marketing platform. We have gathered their insight into 10 pieces of advice: five imperatives to consider while still in the planning phase and five tactics to use during the implementation.