Rydex Investments

Rydex Investments has provided solutions to investment advisors, institutions and individual investors since 1993. This industry pioneer was the first mutual fund company to offer short and leveraged benchmark-based mutual funds. Today, Rydex manages over USD16 billion in assets through more than 100 mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs).

The challenges
In Rydex’s early days, the company’s marketing planning and execution processes were manual. As the company grew, however, the marketing department’s lack of a centralized, team-oriented approach made it difficult to track individual projects and tasks, let alone manage closed- loop campaigns. Project management was a cumbersome process. Support staff, such as the writing and design teams, were frustrated and stressed. The teams also found it difficult to track progress or measure ROI. Beyond these immediate issues, the company also realized that its long-term success depended on the ability to streamline its marketing processes in support of product development, strategic product positioning, creative work, delivery, performance metrics and ROI. Although Rydex’s leaders believed that such efforts would extend into the future, they knew that a marketing resource management (MRM) system would improve the company’s ability to plan, coordinate and measure the impact of its marketing efforts.

The solution
Rydex turned to IBM® Unica® for a tactical planning and workflow management “quick fix.” Miyeko Keen, Director of Marketing Operations and Marketing Services, Rydex, recalls, “The system was easy to understand and easy to implement. As such, we purchased the web-based software as a temporary solution until a more complete system could be identified.”

Rydex had intended to eventually upgrade to an on-premise, enterprise solution. But after several smart components were added to IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand, including strategic management and budgeting functions, Rydex realized that its existing IBM Unica system could become the complete solution it needed.

Usage
From a tactical standpoint, Rydex’s 35-member marketing team uses IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand to seamlessly collaborate on marketing projects. The system also streamlines the day-to-day execution of key projects, ensuring they are delivered on time.

Strategically, the system’s management and budgeting functions provide a solution for effectively managing people and projects, as well as allocating appropriate resources and funds to accomplish specific marketing objectives. It also allows Rydex to change workflow from time to time, which helps the company comply with shifts in regulatory requirements.

The results
Rydex estimates that IBM Marketing Operations OnDemand helped the company increase deliverables by 25 percent with the same amount of staff. It takes significantly less time and fewer resources to traffic and manage projects. And the system’s easy-to-use collaborative work areas allow for multiple resource management and parallel approval and collaboration. Equally important, the strategic planning components of the system unite strategy and execution in a common framework. This information helps guide managers towards more accurate staff allocation, with detailed information that brings together consistent investment and return numbers, supports fulfillment of budget requests, and simplifies project tracking. As a result, planning, review and approval cycles have been significantly shortened.

Likewise, the IBM Unica solution facilitates execution of critical individual elements within the overall plan. Starting with workflow automation for campaigns, events and mediums, the system easily supports comprehensive setup, organization and sharing of project- related schedules, tasks and resources.

About IBM Unica solutions
IBM Unica products are innovative marketing solutions that turn your passion for marketing into business success. Our comprehensive approach to interactive marketing enables organizations worldwide to understand their customers and use that understanding to engage buyers in highly relevant, interactive dialogues across digital, social, and traditional marketing channels.

Recognized as a leading integrator of enterprise systems for multiple industries, we help organizations with a wide variety of projects, analyzing real-time information and returning measurable value to stakeholders. In addition, we provide worldwide support for a variety of industry-partner content, services and applications.