The recent Gartner webinar, “The Gartner CMO Vision for 2025” highlighted the increased pressure on marketing organizations to “exceed extraordinary expectations”.  The lesson? Brand is core to the initiatives organizations are taking to deliver impact in 2025.

It has long been known that a strong brand expressed consistently and authentically by all stakeholders is the best defense in thise age of social activism, increased polarization and social media driven accountability, as well as the best offense in increasing brand awareness, loyalty and adoption. 

Your brand is the last great differentiator at a time when all other differentiators are becoming commoditized (source: Interbrand top 100 brands).

Implementing a Brand Portal solution, such as Beam’s platform, inspires your employees to express your brand promise in everything they do, enhances brand consistency, streamlines workflows, and boosts overall organizational efficiency delivering increased revenue and reduced operating costs. 

However, securing internal support and budget approval for such an initiative at a time when all budgets are being scrutinized, requires a very deliberate approach given the frequent misperception that brand is nothing more than some colors and logos.  

This article outlines key steps to build internal support for investing in a Brand Portal solution, ensuring a smooth transition and successful implementation.

1. Understand that a Brand Portal is Mission Critical

Before advocating for a Brand Portal solution, it’s crucial to comprehend its value. Brand Portals involve organizing, storing, protecting, and distributing a company’s brand assets, brand voice and brand values to ensure they are absorbed into the hearts and minds of your employees and stakeholders.

This process enables your teams to deliver brand consistency across all channels, which is vital for building a strong brand identity and creating a positive customer experience.

2. Identify and Align Key Stakeholders

A Brand Portal implementation will change processes and responsibilities within an organization. Where previously brand assets, templates, guidance and training may have been stored internally, possibly scattered across your intranet or SharePoint, a Brand Portal brings all this together into one integrated source of truth. Engaging two primary groups is essential in building support in your organization: 

• IT Department: Discuss how a brand portal can scale your brand to all stakeholders: employees, agencies, and partners. It will streamline collaboration with external partners. Highlight how SaaS removes the burden on IT to build and support expensive custom software. A brand portal is more than a CMS or fileshare, it is a bespoke solution that would be excessively expensive to build internally, and only through the power of Software as a Service, with economies of scale, brand specific development, and ongoing innovation can a brand portal platform be brought to life cost effectively. 

• Brand Users (e.g., Advertising, Sales, Corporate Communications, HR): Explain how reorganizing assets will enhance productivity and ensure brand consistency. Highlight the time and cost savings for sharing brand artifacts with external partners like agencies. Shipping large PDFs around becomes a thing of the past. Address any concerns and emphasize the benefits of a centralized system. 

3. Develop a Clear Business Case

To gain approval from decision-makers, build a compelling business case. The best business cases that we see our customers develop include: 

• Current Challenges: Detail the challenges you are dealing with and the potential impact on shareholder value. Consider inconsistent brand representation, confusing messaging in market, and at worst inflammatory content that elicits social media backlash. Include time loss and inefficiencies due to assets being held in disparate systems. Enumerate the blindness that you currently suffer being unable to monitor brand usage and consistency. Quantify the intrinsic inconsistencies in response times given inefficient communication channels. 

• Proposed Solution: Describe how a brand portal addresses these challenges by providing a centralized hub for all brand assets, ensuring easy access and consistent usage. Paint a picture of a better way, a way in which the brand portal is a source of inspiration for stakeholders, that reinforces your messaging and positioning and provides insights into best-in-class brand usage across the organization. 

• Expected Benefits: Highlight improvements in brand consistency, faster time-to-market for campaigns, and enhanced collaboration. Ultimately delivering increased revenue and strengthening brand resilience. 

• Return on Investment (ROI): Provide data on potential cost savings and revenue growth resulting from streamlined processes and a stronger brand presence. For help building your business case try our interactive ROI calculator.

4. Engage Procurement, InfoSec and Privacy Early

As with any investment it is important to engage the right parties sooner than later. Navigating the procurement process can be challenging, especially if you have not purchased software for your organization before. To expedite approval: 

• Partner: Reach out to your procurement, InfoSec and data privacy contacts early and make sure you understand their processes, information needs, and expectations. They will likely have questionnaires for your Brand Portal provider to complete. 

• Prepare Documentation: Gather all necessary information, including vendor details, pricing, and compliance requirements. Work with your service provider to get any questionnaires and supporting information (e.g. ISO 27001 certification) completed early so you are not waiting later in the procurement process. 

• Demonstrate Value: Start with the why. Be sure to share the business need and value with these teams so they understand why this is important for you and for the company. 

• Maintain Communication: Keep procurement teams informed as you go through the process. Surprises slow things down and delay the ultimate delivery of value. Address all concerns promptly and keep the process moving. 

5. Address Budget Approval

Embarking on this journey without budget approval would be a sure path to disappointment. If budget has not yet been secured, then there are some immediate steps that should be taken: 

• Engage the budget owner: Identify the budget owner. Determine with them if this is coming out of a current budget allocation or if new funding needs to be secured, and if so, from whom. Work with them to understand the process for securing the allocation of budget. 

• Clear Communication: Articulate the goals, objectives, and expected outcomes of the proposed solution. Demonstrate how the Brand Portal initiative delivers outcomes that are aligned with the business goals. 

• Detailed Breakdown: Provide a comprehensive budget that includes not only the cost of any software subscriptions but also costs for implementation, and training. 

7. Plan for Implementation

Once approval is secured, but potentially before contracts are finalized, it is best practice to start to prepare for a successful rollout. Some key steps that can help ensure a quick time to value are: 

• Assigning a Project Manager: Designate a leader to oversee the implementation process. This person should have strong coordination skills, be detail oriented and have the ability to synchronize communication across all the disparate teams. 

• Build a Project Plan: More than a schedule a good project plan documents the project scope, goals, roles and responsibilities, risk management plan, key deliverables, training plan, change management plan, and the monitoring, KPIs and reporting. 

• Developing a Timeline: Build the high-level timeline. Set realistic milestones for each phase of the project. Share with all stakeholders and get their buy-in and ownership of their respective involvement. 

8. Monitor and Evaluate

One of the most important steps for a successful implementation is to plan for the post-launch monitoring: 

• Pre-define Metrics: Identify the key success metrics that will be used to measure success. Set clear targets well in advance of launch. 

• Prepare to Measure Performance: Establish the processes and procedures needed to measure the identified metrics. Ensure any required technology is in place to capture the metrics. 

• Plan for Change: Define the process for evaluating performance, determining corrective action when needed and for executing that corrective action. Prepare for change. 

By following these steps, you can build robust internal support for investing in a brand portal like Beam’s, ensuring rapid approval, frictionless implementation and maximizing the benefits achieved as well as minimizing the time need to achieve those benefits. 

Elevate your brand to its rightful place as a core strategic differentiator, and give it the platform it deserves.