Why Your Marketing Team Needs an Enterprise Risk Management Solution

Introduction

When people hear "enterprise risk management solution," they usually think of insurance, cybersecurity or finance. They rarely think about marketing.

But if you manage a brand with hundreds of locations, dealers or franchises, marketing is actually one of your biggest risks.

What happens if a franchisee prints a sign with an old offer? What if a dealer claims co-op funds for an ad they never ran? What if a legal disclaimer is missing from a printed contract?

These aren't just "oops" moments. They are liabilities.

IRIS Strategic Marketing Support (IRIS) helps brands mitigate these risks. With GearBox® by IRIS, you can control your assets, track your money and ensure compliance without slowing down your sales teams.

The Real Risks in Distributed Marketing

For multi-location brands, risk comes from a lack of control.

1. Brand Compliance Risk

If every local manager creates their own flyers in Microsoft Word, your brand consistency is gone. Using the wrong logo or color scheme dilutes the brand you spent millions building.

2. Financial Waste and Fraud

Co-op marketing funds are a huge target for waste. Without a system to verify claims, you might be reimbursing partners for ads that are off-brand or, worse, never existed.

3. Legal and Regulatory Risk

In industries like finance, healthcare or alcohol, a missing disclaimer on a poster can lead to massive fines. If you can't lock those disclaimers on your templates, you are exposed.

4. Operational Failure

If your stores run out of critical operational forms or signage during a promo, you lose revenue. That is a supply chain risk that marketing operations needs to manage.

How GearBox® Acts as Your Risk Management Solution

GearBox® by IRIS isn't just a shop; it’s a safety net. It centralizes control so you can sleep better at night.

Here is how it protects your business:

• Locked Templates: You define what can be edited. A user can change a phone number, but they can't delete the legal text or stretch the logo.
• Approval Workflows: Set rules so that expensive orders or custom designs need a manager's sign-off before they go to print.
• Audit Trails: Every order, download and edit is tracked. If something goes wrong, you know exactly who did it and when.
• Inventory Alerts: The system tracks stock levels in real-time so you never run out of critical items.

Use Case: Ply Gem Reduces Financial Risk with Better Oversight

Ply Gem needed to manage marketing materials for a massive network of distributors. Before they had a centralized system, managing vendors and tracking spend was manual and risky.

They used GearBox® by IRIS to bring order to the chaos.

By implementing this solution, they:

• Consolidated 20+ vendors, reducing the risk of inconsistent quality
• Gained total visibility into co-op fund usage, preventing waste
• Reallocated over $750k in resources by eliminating manual admin work
• Ensured 100% adoption, meaning no one was going "rogue" outside the system

Read the Ply Gem Case Study

Conclusion

You can't eliminate every risk in business, but you can control the ones in your marketing operations.

An enterprise risk management solution for marketing isn't about stopping creativity; it's about building safe guardrails. GearBox® by IRIS gives your team the freedom to sell while keeping the brand, the budget and the legal team safe.

Talk to IRIS to secure your marketing operations today.