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Marketing leaders today are in an unprecedented position to help organizations achieve their objectives in increasingly competitive and dynamic markets. Marketing Operations Partners is one the first services companies focused on changing the MO of marketing by leveraging the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations. To address this significant challenge—and opportunity - Marketing Operations Partners provides a ready-to-go COO and change management team consisting of leading thought leaders in the marketing community. Our team includes subject matter experts in the areas of lead generation and nurturing, customer experience management, process design, strategic planning process facilitation, technology assessment, organizational diagnosis, change management, ROI analysis, business intelligence, and marketing, sales and product alignment. For more information, visit www.mopartners.com.
Marketing Operations leaders from Blue Coat Systems, Juniper Networks, NetApp and Polycom have joined the panel discussion for the April 16 Best Practices in Marketing Operations workshop. Edward Allison, senior director of Marketing Planning & Operations at Juniper; Judy Ash, director of Strategic Marketing at NetApp; Larissa DeCarlo, Vice President, Marketing Operations at Blue Coat ; and Jennifer Pockell-Wilson, director, Global Marketing Operations at Polycom will share their experiences, best practices and lessons learned during the second half of the workshop.
Marketing Operations Partners CEO Gary Katz is conducting the workshop on behalf of the the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Marketing Association on April 16 at the University of Phoenix in Santa Clara:
WHEN
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
5:30 pm-6:00 pm Registration and Networking
6:00 pm-8:00 pm Program and Q&A
Get more information or register now
WHERE
University of Phoenix, 3590 N. First Street in San Jose (near Tasman)
Fresh off my two-day Marketing Operations workshop in Hong Kong, I'm conducting a Best Practices in Marketing Operations workshop for the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Marketing Association (SVAMA) on April 16 from 6-8 p.m. in Santa Clara at the University of Phoenix.
Here's a summary of the SVAMA workshop:
Discover Marketing Operations Benchmarking Study findings from 80+ CMOs, Marketing VPs and MO Directors
Receive guidance on how to apply study insights to support marketing performance management, integrated marketing and strategic management of marketing objectives
Hear case studies and lessons learned from a blue-ribbon expert panel of Marketing Operations leaders
CMOs are under the gun. Expectations for Marketing are accelerating. The call for accountability and ROI is deafening. Yet average CMO tenure is barely more than two years, less than half that of the average CEO. To address these challenges, increasingly more enterprises are turning to Marketing Operations (MO) to run Marketing like a fully accountable business. This session includes a presentation of findings and insights from a recent benchmarking study conducted by Marketing Operations Partners on how companies are leveraging MO to run the marketing function as a profit center and fully accountable business. Some of the key insights from the study include:
- How Marketing Operations as a formalized and focused discipline delivers greater accountability and strategic impact to company performance
- Why sales and stakeholder alignment, socialization and communication are of equal importance to automation, process, dashboards and scorecards
- Key drivers in the journey from inception to maturity in Marketing Operations best practices.
- The role of supportive culture, clear goals and executive sponsorship as key success factors for progress.
What you'll learn:
- Five common characteristics of best practice companies
- Five key focus areas to achieve marketing process excellence
- Three key strategies to achieve marketing execution excellence.
- A practical framework to get key Marketing Operations initiatives funded, supported and successfully launched.
- How to leverage Marketing Operations to deliver the promise of integrated, strategic and measurable marketing.
The session will conclude with a moderated blue ribbon panel of Marketing Operations leaders from leading Silicon Valley companies, who will share their experience and lessons learned.
Get more information or register for the event
Gary
Marketing ROI is the hot topic at the March 13 luncheon of the Silicon Valley Chapter of the American Marketing Assocation. Alex Eldemir of SAP, until recently one of Pat LaPointe's partners at Marketing NPV, and Craig DeNoce, a past CMO now on the consulting side, comprise the expert panel, with yours truly moderating.
The event is at Michael's at Shoreline Park in Mountain View and runs from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.
Some of the areas that the panel will discuss and break-out groups will address include:
- How do we define "return"?
- New technology - what can be measured, what cannot?
- How can we approach accountability?
- How can I forecast ROI in the bidding process?
- Does 1-to-1 marketing provide the greatest return?
- What other resources exist for further understanding of these concepts?
The cost to attend the SVAMA Marketing ROI panel is free for SVAMA members, who only need to pay $15 for their lunches. Non-members pay $30, which includes lunch.
To register: http://www.kintera.org/autogen/home/default.asp?ievent=266659
More information: http://www.svama.org/middaymeetings.html Gary
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Forrester Research recently released its first report in two years on Enterprise Marketing Platforms and found that Marketing technology vendors are now placing greater focus on usability.
According to Forrester, marketing platforms consist of six core applications: campaign management, customer analytics, interaction management, marketing resource management (MRM), marketing asset management, and lead management.
No single vendor received top marks across all of these categories. Forrester cited Unica as the leader in market leadership and relationship marketing; Aprimo as the leader in Marketing Operations, and Oracle Siebel as delivering the broadest overall application.
Forrester revealed that campaign management functionality is no longer highly differentiated. "There's a recognition in the marketing universe -- and by vendors as well -- that campaign management is a mature discipline now," said Suresh Vittal, senior analyst with Forrester and author of the report. "The tools come off as very similar. Where they differentiate themselves is in the user friendliness, depth and access to analytical data."
In interactive marketing, newer vendors that traditionally were not considered part of the marketing platform market are emerging, such as Omniture and Responsys. Vital expects these companies to continue to offer better functionality than the enterprise vendors because of their deeper domain expertise in interactive marketing and better understanding the space.
Gary |
Our partner, VisionEdge Marketing, is conducting its annual 2008 Marketing Performance Survey and you still have until this Sunday, February 10 to register your opinions. The survey, which takes about 15 minutes to complete, is a national Web survey intended to track how companies are adopting marketing metrics today. As a participant in this study you can request a complimentary copy of the survey summary, which will be sent to you in early March after the survey closes. This report will give you insight into which performance indicators are being tracked by other companies. It will also help you assess where your company is in relation to the metrics movement: at the vanguard, about average, or adopting metrics more slowly than average. Also, if you provide your name and email address VisionEdge will enter you into a drawing for a $50 gift certificate from either Amazon.com or iTunes.
This should be a no-brainer for marketing leaders who care about demonstrating the value of marketing to their organizations and raising the stature of our profession in the C-suite and in general.
Click here to participate in the survey.
Gary
The AMA/Aquent webcast in which Marketing Operations Partners is cited, "Do More with Less: Putting Marketing Operations to Work," is now available on demand at http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast432.php. Check it out!
Another webcast worth seeing is the one AMA and Unica conducted last month "Overcoming Marketing Operations Challenges," which is available at http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast431.php. The emphasis of this webcast is on how Marketing Resource Management overcomes top challenges marketers faces including how to:
* Increase Yearly Marketing Output Without Increasing Staff
* Eliminate Dependence on Tracking Spreadsheets and Missed Deadlines
* Improve Marketing Operations Transparency Throughout Organization
Presenteres in the Unica webcast include:
* Miyeko Keen, Director of Marketing Operations and Marketing Services, Rydex Instruments
* Suzanne Kissane, Senior Manger, Program Management, Philips Healthcare
* Sue Turner, Marketing and Communications, CSC, Financial Services
* Dick Olsen, Executive Vice President, Saatchi & Saatchi
Alan Bunce, Director of Product Marketing for Unica, is the moderator.
Gary
Aquent, a world leader in marketing and creative staffing agency, has been trumpeting Marketing Operations lately. A couple of days ago, they teamed with the American Marketing Association to produce a webcast featuring MarketSphere Consulting's National Practice Director Mayer Becker. The webcast, called "Called Doing More with Less: Putting Marketing Operations to Work," covered the importance and role of the Marketing Operations organization, and offered a five-step process for achieving a successful transformation. Fellow MarketSphere colleagues, Melanie Harrison, most recently at Sprint, and Eric Siano, formerly of General Motors, were also on hand to share their experiences in managing MO and provide advise on how to overcome issues such as roadblocks and the challenge of change. A replay of the webcast should be available soon and I'll definitely post it here.
Taking its championing of MO one step further, Aquent also produced a podcast on Marketing Operations on its "Talent Blog." I was fortunate to be interviewed by Aquent's Matthew Grant for this podcast. You can check out here: http://blogs.aquent.com/thetalentblog/.
Here is the direct link to the audio as well: http://www.switchpod.com/users/mgrant77/GaryKatzInterview.mp3
You can even find the podcast on iTunes. I guess that means Marketing Operations is going mainstream!
Kudos to Aquent!
Happy listening!
Gary
Good things are worth waiting for. And one of the best presentations at the Henry Stewart Marketing Operations Symposium in Los Angeles in November was Jon Umsted's humorous and insightful tale, which he titled "Advancing Marketing Operations at Sprint." Jon, who has served as both pipeline and process manager for Sprint/Nextel, captivated us as he described the significant hurdles the Sprint MO team had to overcome and the invaluable lessons they learned during their 1-1/2 year experience focusing their MO efforts to implement a Marketing Resource Management technology solution.
The journey included building a case for change, fostering partnerships early on with key stakeholders, building the business case, gaining support, vendor selection, change management and measuring success. Like Nortel, whose experience I shared in a previous post, Sprint adopted the Change Acceptance Process (CAP), GE's change management methodology. Jon's presentation provides extensive detail on elements of each of the above stages and examples of useful tools, including CAP and Project Quality Metrics (PQM) diagrams, and two slides that describe Sprint's lessons learned.
Download the complete presentation at:
http://www.mopartners.com/documents/SprintLAMOM2007-Ext-Final.pdf
Gary
Happy New Year patient readers. I hope everyone had an excellent holiday season and is starting the year off with a bang. Please forgive my overly-long gap in posts.
I will be publishing a series of posts over the next several days, including long-awaited commentary and a link to download the excellent presentation at last fall's Henry Stewart Marketing Operations Symposium by Jon Umsted of Sprint. In this case, Sprint's laborious approval process is the culprit for the delay, not me. But I think you'll find the material well worth the wait.
Today, another subject is top of mind. As a loud - and maybe bordering on obnoxious - voice of Marketing Operations, I'm going to admit to the world that I don't always get it right.
In this case I'm talking about e-mail marketing, a core component of Marketing Operations today.
E-mail marketing is seen by many marketers as a panacea compared to off-line communications vehicles, such as direct mail, because it is far more economical and the results can be more easily tracked and analyzed. In short, you can, at least theoretically, do more with less and measure the outcome. Optimization and accountability. Core themes of any Marketing Operations effort.
Yet the norms and rules of e-mail marketing are clearly involving and still in the eye of the beholder. I'll give a somewhat painful example from my own experience.
Is it just me?
Recently Marketing Operations Partners started using an e-mail marketing solution to more consistently communicate with our target audience. We felt we were careful in choosing the receipients who would receive our initial mailing, which was basically an offer to opt-out of our e-mail marketing system if they were no longer interested. In short, we were trying to validate our database.
Out of a list of about 2000 people that I thought were friends, I received 2 flames, accusing us of making presumptions about their historical expression of interest in us and blasting us for using e-mail marketing instead of doing the heavy lifting involved with personal contact via one-to-one e-mail or a phone call.
The irony is that both of these friends-turned-flamers were in my LinkedIn network. And one couldn't even recall who I was.
Shame on me for making the erroneous assumption that my "trusted" LinkedIn network would be interested in the developments of my company or even welcome the opportunity to opt out if our communications were more granular than they cared to receive.
But wait a minute, doesn't an accepted LinkedIn invitation presume that the person joining my network would naturally be interested in me - or at least not take offense to receiving an innocuous communication from me or my company?
Certainly that same friend-turned-flamer wouldn't have a problem - and might even be grateful - if they were able to reach an important contact through LinkedIn as a result of my introduction.
Maybe in some cases it's just a one-way street?
If that's the case, maybe I should feel used and offended myself. The implication is that it's okay for someone to benefit from the network I've worked hard to develop for years but the first time I make an error that in the slightest way resembles the spamming or impersonal behavior of the professional "users" we all deplore, I become persona non grada, effectively "one of them."
Has our backlash against spammers, telemarketers and other invaders of privacy become so powerful that we are now engaged in "friendly fire?" Perhaps our intolerance has reached such a boiling point that we have forgotten that:
1. Marketing has changed dramatically
2. Marketing is evolving faster than any of us can keep up with, and
3. Marketing is still, in large part, a "test tube" where poor chemical mixes are bound to happen
4. Most people respond better to constructive and detached feedback than attacks and rants
I guess my major message here is that even marketing scientists f___ up. But if we're to change the MO of Marketing for the better, we need marketing scientists, warts and all. So the next time you receive a misguided but clearly well-intentioned marketing missive, try to lead with love for the marketing scientist. Give him or her the benefit of the doubt.
After all, if we kick every marketing scientist out of the lab because an experiment doesn't work as intended, how will we ever achieve the accountable vision of marketing we all seek?
On the otherhand, maybe I'm just being hyper-vigilant and overly-dramatic about this topic, not unlike my friends-turned-flamers.
Or maybe not.
Do we have cause for alarm? Are we accidentally killing our friends in the battle against spammers.
Or is it just me?
Gary
A key value proposition for Marketing Operations is to bring more strategic focus to an enterprise. Another is putting the operational engine in place to translate strategy into effective action. Today's story (below) that two-thirds of CMOs want to increase their strategic involvement is no surprise. What does surprise me is that one-third of CMOs don't. Are these the long-terms CMOs who have eclipsed the 26.8 month average because they are already knee-deep in the strategy of the company? Or are these the short-term CMOs who bounce from one company to another, fooling themselves into believing they are making a big difference when they are really just biding time until they can move to the next "musical chair?"
Forrester study finds CMOs want more strategic involvement
Cambridge, Mass. -- Two-thirds of chief marketing officers say they want more involvement in business strategy development and increased profit and loss responsibility, according to a study conducted by Forrester Research and executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles.
The study, “The Evolved CMO,” was based on an online survey of more than 130 senior marketing executives at companies with revenue greater than $100 million.
It found that 82% of CMOs said strategic thinking is a top imperative for their jobs. It also revealed that the majority of CMOs spend less than 10% of their time on career development.
“If CMOs want to become true business leaders, it’s time for them to step up to the plate and proactively evolve their role,” said Cindy Commander, an analyst with Forrester Research’s CMO Group.
Welcome back from what I hope was a great Thanksgiving holiday! This is an especially excellent time of year to express our gratitude. And today I'm grateful for Beth Weesner, principal of Marketing Transformation Services (MTS). Beth is a pint-sized ball of energy who is one of the most respective voices in our business and has been an integral part of the Henry Stewart Marketing Operations conferences since the beginning. Her company, MTS, is the go-to partner for deployment of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) technology deployments. They've counseled companies like Amgen, eBay, HP, HSBC, IBM, Intel, Nortel and REI on their MRM strategies. I'm very fortunate to have Beth as a friend and ally, and especially pleased that she has agreed to join the Marketing Operations Partners' advisory board.
If you were attended the Henry Stewart LA conference Marketing Operations track early this month, you got a big helping of Beth and no doubt came away well fed. Today, I'll share some of the highlights from Beth's conference-opening presentation on Marketing Operations and provide a link to download it at the end of this post.
One of the key messages in Beth's presentation is in a slide titled "What is MRM?" The answer:
"MRM is not just the technology that enables organizations to manage the operations of marketing . . . it's about the right combination of people, processes and technology working in collaboration to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the marketing function."
Halleluja! Can I hear an Amen!
Beth recommends a six-step approach for a successful MRM initiative in which technology evaluation is the final phase. This wise guidance is based on hard lessons learned as Beth observed countless companies rolling out technology "fixes" that instead spurred a whole new host of problems, usually because these marketing automation pioneers lacked the processes understanding, taxonomy and organizational support to optimize their considerable investments.
Among the steps she proposes:
1. A Strategic Assesment process to identify the business drivers, analyze stakeholder needs, create a unification strategy, develop the initial business case, define a governance model and deliver the initial roadmap.
2. Tending to Foundational Elements, such as change management, a communications plan, and defining a common language and common metrics.
3. Project definition, including developing the core team, conducting a discovery process, re-assessing the initial roadmap, developing a phased scope and plan, and defining success metrics for each phase.
4. Organizational aligment, includng evaluating roles and responsibilities, analyze skill gaps and effecting organizational recommendations.
5. Process optimization, including assessing current processes, recommending process improvements and documenting and agreeing to process.
6. Technology evaluation, including determing solutions requirements (both functional and technical), evaluating vendors through an RFP process and, finally, implementing the new technology solution.
You can download the complete presentation here.
Before I let you go back to your busy lives, let me offer one piece of advice to get the most out of Beth's recommendations.
Think twice before trying to implement her great guidance by yourself!
In this crazy age of the "individual contributor director/VP" most of us are too darn willing to try to do everything ourselves, at great expense to both psyche, health and companies. Make an honest assessment before taking your act solo. Inside the buzz-saw that is today's corporation, do you really have the headroom, clarity and strategic focus to formulate, mobilize necessary support and execute a complex Marketing Operations initiative without an objective, detached partner by your side? Are you leveraging your resources effectively or are you throwing bodies and dollars at big problems, hoping they'll go away? Do you have the subject matter expertise available to ensure the success of your initiative? Are you overemphasizing the task at the expense of the strategy?
Companies like MTS and Marketing Operations Partners are here to help you minimize your exposure and get the most out of your MO investment. So invite us in to assess your needs before you move forward with your next Marketing Operations initiative. By collaborating with the right external partner (or two), you reap a number of benefits:
* Help assessing your organization's current Marketing Operations health
* Best practice-based guidance to get challenging MO initiatives off-the-ground and running effectively, while ensuring sustainability
* Mentoring and training of your key people so that you develop MO expertise and competency internally
* Sound strategic and operational counsel on how to best organize as you move forward to accomplish key MO objectives
If you're satisfied with the status quo, feel free to ignore my admittedly self-serving recommendation. But if you believe your company's marketing function needs to change its MO, remember nothing changes unless something changes. And that change starts with you.
Okay, enough preaching already. If you read this far, I'm also grateful for your tolerance and patience.
Thank you and stay warm!
Gary
Jill Rowley asked and, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, all ye shall receive.
Today I'll share some highlights from Nortel Vice President of Marketing Operations Peter Finter, who was definitely one of the most amusing, engaging and refreshingly candid speakers during the Henry Stewart conference last week. His presentation, "Marketing Operations: A Case Study in Business Transformation," created quite a stir and is in great demand.
When Finter took over the MO function in mid-2006, he inherited a situation with loads of complexity - Nortel had four regions and four lines of business under a single CMO - but very little formalized Marketing Operations structure, including a lack of common global marketing processes and marketing technology platforms.
To address these deficiencies, Finter focused on a transformation strategy that involved global alignment, processes and metrics, and unified and integrated execution. A global marketing board was formed that was vested with defining the global marketing strategy, positoning the company for longer-term growth opportunities, aligning Nortel's marketing leaders, sharing best practices and content globallly, providing global program management of key initiatives and driving process around talent development, recruitment and retention. Lacking a staff initially , he built the core MO team with virtual members representing Nortel's different regions and business units. A Marketing Performance Measurement process was established around key global marketing priorities. including building the brand, salesforce effectivness, establishing a foundation for customer centric marketing and more.
Nortel's MO function has come an incredibly long way in a year. Finter's 25-page presentation is chock-full of specifics and tool samples. Check out the complete presentation.
Gary
I was fortunate enough to chair the Marketing Operations track again for the 2007 Henry Stewart conference in Los Angeles, my fourth time in this role over the past three years (and I just agreed to do it again for the NY event in May 2008.) While still relatively small (about 70 participants in the audience at the peak) and still a "ugly stepsister" to the Digital Asset Management Conference, the MO side has definitely made significant strides. I can remember not too long ago, the MO (then known as MOM) track was pretty basic and there was precious little experience to share. This time, we all enjoyed some fascinating and insightful case studies from companies such as Cisco, Nortel, Sprint and Burger King, as well as panels on Marketing Performance Measurement and Marketing Operations Management experience that included speakers from eBay, Fandango, HSBC, Seagate, Cisco WebEx and others.
I've been collecting presentations from the conference, which I will summarize and post in the Marketing Operations Partners' Resources' section over the next few days. Today, I'll share a few highlights from presentations by Michael Gerard, Director of the CMO Advisory Practice for International Data Corporation, and Rob Redford, VP Relationship Marketing for Cisco, who until recently was running Marketing Operations.
Marketing Operations: Maintaining the Momentum, presented by Michael Gerard, Director, CMO Advisory Practice, International Data Corporation
Gerard reports that the key focus for marketing leaders this coming year is striving for alignment. IDC gives companies a B+ for alignment within marketing, B- for alignment within companies and a C for alignment with the market. To improve these grades, IDC says MO must continue to dirve process innovation and continuous improvement.
IDC has also advanced a useful definition of Marketing Operations Staff, which follows:
"Internal staff responsible for developing and orchestrating the processes and systems required to enable efficient and effective marketing, More specifically, marketing operations staff members are responsible for developing and managing the processes to ensure smooth operation of strategic planning, financial management, marketing performance measurement (including dashboard development), marketing infrastructure and overall marketing excellence."
IDC also shared that companies are typically devoting 2-4% of their total marketing staff to Marketing Operations: an average of 2.6% in Services companies, 3.6% in Hardward companies and 4.5% in Software companies. A higher percentage implies greater complexity. The average MO ratio for companies in IDC's Marketing Leadership quadrant is 4.9 %, compared to 2.8% in the other three quadrants.
Get the complete IDC presentation here.
The Marketing of Marketing Operations: Repositioning Your Ops Team as Strategic, presented by Rob Redford, VP Relationship Marketing, Cisco
Redford, who just finished a stint as Cisco CMO Sue Bostrom's Chief of Staff, acknowledges that process is viewed by creative marketing types as a four-letter word, but feels MO is in a unique position to belnd the "art and science." He believes the best place to start is by leveraging data and analytics, but the key is to focus on insights. In addition, MO leaders should:
* Explicitly show the connection between activities and strategic company goals
* Overcorrect and over-communicate to be perceived as strategic
* Understand that behavior change is often the key to success or the seed of failure
* Carefully assess how much change your organization can tolerate
* Strive for a directionally correct strategy over an ideal one
* Deploy new tools if the value propositon is considerably greater than the perceived learning cost, allows a seamless transition from old to new and provides a very shallow learning curve
* Devote a majority of their time to determining who to influence and how to influence them
* Act as enablers not enforcers (no process police please)
* Build a community to help implement change
Get the complete Cisco presentation here.
Gary
The upcoming Marketing Operations conference in Hollywood November 12-13 looks to be the best MO event Henry Stewart has ever produced. What's that, you say? Wasn't it you, Gary, who wrote just this Spring about the limitations of the event - the small audience, the even smaller number of potential buyers, how the MO side is the ugly stepsister of the DAM (Digital Asset Management) event it is co-hosted with.
All true, and certainly those problems haven't gone away overnight. The DAM event is still the behemoth. But take a look at the focus of MO conference program, how the conference is now being promoted and the quality of speakers that are presenting. Big improvement!
Marketing Operations now has a dedicated two-day track and, alas, the acronym MOM (Marketing Operations Management) has finally been abandoned in the conference and track titles.
The conference has evolved from a technology showcase and place to learn the fundamentals to an interactive opportunity to share experience with peers and practically apply tested and proven best practice approaches in support of a broader yet clearer vision and framework of effective Marketing Operations.
Henry Stewart Events has also hired a professional public relations firm, CommPros Group, which is instituting a variety of marketing initiatives to help create a more sustained dialogue with the press. Look for a quarterly e-newsletter. More regular news on industry and technology trends and announcements throughout the year. Even a long-overdue press room at the conference itself.
That's very well-and-good, Gary, but marketing is just marketing. Where's the beef?
Well, a great example of premium prime rib is the impressive cast of senior marketing executives and big-name companies the conference staff, led by new Henry Stewart Events Managing Partner John Gaylor and Conference Producer Russell Hale, has secured to speak at the LA event. Here's a few examples:
* Nortel VPs of Marketing, Peter Finter
* Cisco CMO Sue Bostrom's recent Chief-of-Staff, Rob Redford (not the actor), who now is VP of Relationship Marketing
* IBM's Marketing Systems Director, Michael Macdonald (not the Doobie Brothers' performer)
* Wells Fargo's SVP of Online Customer Management, Shawn Mielke
* JP Morgan Chase Investment Banks' VP, Technology, Tools & Processes, Carrie Nedrow (a Six Sigma Black Belt who previously led Intuit's Marketing Effectiveness team)
Some of the other client-side speakers are from respected companies like Amgen, Burger King, Cisco WebEx, eBay, Seagate and Sprint. On the consulting side, Marketing Operations thought leaders such as Marketing Transformation Services' Beth Weesner, IDC CMO Adisory Practice Dirctor Michael Gerard and Michael Moon of Gistics are also presenting.
Oh, and yes, I'll be there in multiple roles. I'll be the Marketing Operations track chair for both days. I'll also be speaking on Best Practices in Marketing Operations: Benchmarking Results from 80+ companies and co-moderating with Laura Patterson of VisionEdge Marketing "Best Practices in Managing and Measuring Marketing Performance: An Executive Roundtable." The impressive panel includes:
* Joe Schwartz, Director, WW Marketing Operations and Segment Marketing, Cisco WebEx
* William Coker, Sr Manager, Marketing Operations, Seagate Technology
* Jill Rowley, Director of Key Accounts, Eloqua
* Tony Priore, Chief Marketing Officer, Biz360
* Jerry Levy, Vice President of Global Marketing, Agility Logistics
* Mukund Mohan, VP of Marketing, Inovis
In between my presentation and the executive roundtable, Laura will also be speaking on "Using Dashboards to Improve Marketing Accountability."
Here are descriptions for the three sessions:
Best Practices in Marketing Operations: Benchmarking Study Results from 80+ Companies
CMOs are under the gun. Expectations for Marketing are accelerating. The call for accountability and ROI is deafening. Yet average CMO tenure is barely more than two years, less than half that of the average CEO. To address these challenges, increasingly more enterprises are turning to Marketing Operations (MO) to run Marketing like a fully accountable business. This session includes a presentation of findings and insights from a recent benchmarking study conducted by Marketing Operations Partners on how companies are leveraging MO with increasing sophistication and impact. Some of the key insights from the study include:
• How Marketing Operations as a formalized and focused discipline delivers greater accountability and strategic impact to company performance
• Why sales and stakeholder alignment, socialization and communication are of equal importance to automation, process, dashboards and scorecards
• Key drivers in the journey from inception to maturity in Marketing Operations best practices.
• The role of supportive culture, clear goals and executive sponsorship as key success factors for progress.
Using Marketing Dashboards to Improve Marketing Accountability
Marketers everywhere are being asked to demonstrate their contribution and value to the organization. CMO’s, Marketing VPs and Directors all are seeking a framework for organizational alignment and continuous improvement. Many marketers these days find that measuring and improving marketing requires defining and tracking the right metrics and then developing a meaningful way to present the data.
• What is a Marketing Dashboard?
• Why you need one?
• Key marketing metrics for every dashboard
• The dashboard development process
• Examples of dashboards
Best Practices for Managing and Measuring Marketing Performance: An Executive Roundtable
As Marketing leaders become more experienced and sophisticated in how they demonstrate the value and contribution of Marketing to their C-level executive teams, both Marketing and Marketing Operations grow in stature and influence. Marketing executives from SMBs to large enterprises will share their best practices and key insights from their ongoing journeys into marketing accountability. Panelists will offer their insights into:
• Trials and tribulations on the journey to marketing accountability
• The marketing metrics they chose and why
• The role and scope of Marketing Operations in their organizations, including what is and isn’t working
• Their marketing dashboard development process and challenges
• Practical recommendations for creating a dashboard
• Guidance for securing executive leadership and buy-in for the Marketing Operations function and key initiatives
• Lessons learned
Like I said before, big improvement! And it can only get better if we attract the right people in the audience. So what are you waiting for? Book your ticket to LA today and join us in Hollywood for the best Henry Stewart MO production ever.
Gary
Just read an insightful article today in Advertising Age that encourages Chief Marketing Officers to start thinking like investment managers. Amen!
The author, Anthony Young of Optimedia US, suggests that the first stage is to start with the language. For example, instead of referring to the marketing budget, we might call it a loan instead, one that needs to be paid back, with interest. Young also wonders if we shouldn't "recast ROI as profit or loss", and view advertising and marketing channels as "alternative investment funds designed to maximize marketing profits." Changing our lexicon helps us speak the same language as CEOs and enhances our credibility as business people, not just marketers.
Young goes on to describe a process that is a model for an evolving area of Marketing Operations we're just starting figure out - marketing portfolio management.
Here are a few of Young's recommended strategies that align nicely with the portfolio management vision:
1. Identify points of leverage, based on opportunities to entice and strengthen existing customer relationships or build a strategy around a competitive differentiator
2. Clarify the investment's objectives - what is the investment trying to achieve? Who are the targets, new or existing customers? Is the goal to drive sales or build loyalty? How does the investment align with enterprise objectives? What is the payback period?
3. Educate non-marketing colleagues about how Marketing intends to contribute to profitability, how much it's going to cost and how success will be measured
4. Differentiate between growth and maintenance objectives. For example, growth objectives might be to increase buying, usage or new users, or introduce more products. Maintenance objectives might be to sustain "minimum investment levels to keep the brand healthy and profitable."
5. Weigh risk by calculating anticipated investment returns, comparing them against not investing and alternative invstment options within your company.
6. Based on your company's investment strategy, allocate a percentage of the funds to proven vehicles and a percentage to testing new venues. A good rule of thumb, as in investments, is the 40/40/20 rule - 40% in safe investments, 40% in slight riskier investments and 20% in speculative opportuntiies.
7. Measure thoroughly and make periodic adjustments as the results come in.
Check out the complete article.
Gary
Laura Patterson and I are moderating separate panels at the Marketing Operations Management Symposium November 12-13 in Los Angeles and are seeking additional panelists.
I'm moderating the panel Best Practices in Marketing Operations: The Journey to MO Maturity on Tuesday, November 13th. I have space available for up to 3 VPs of Marketing, CMOs, or Marketing Operations Directors who could share their stories about the key drivers in their MO journeys, success factors, obstacles and how they are moving toward increasing MO sophistication and integration. Please contact me at if you are or know someone appropriate for the panel opportunities.
Laura Patterson, president of VisionEdge Marketing, is moderating the panel Marketing Performance Measurement Panel: Insights into Creating and Using a Marketing Dashboard on Monday November 12th. She still has a space open for a VP of Marketing or CMO of a B2B company who could talk about their marketing dashboard, the metrics selected, how the dashboard was created and is being used to facilitate strategy, make decisions and demonstrate marketing’s value, and share lessons learned. Please contact Laura if you are or know someone appropriate for the panel opportunity.
Laura is on Marketing Operations Partners' Advisory Board and her company, VisionEdge Marketing, Inc., is an important strategic partner. VisionEdge Marketing is a data-driven and metrics-focused marketing firm that specializes in improving marketing performance and helping organizations create a competitive advantage designed to attract, secure and retain profitable customers. Their services include marketing performance management, business intelligence, product and strategic marketing, pipeline re-engineering and revenue creation, and professional development.
We will certainly entertain the possibility of qualified individuals serving on both panels. If you have interest in serving on both panels, please contact me.
Gary
Is your company a Marketing Operations Best Practice company? Marketing Operations Partners has completed its benchmarking study, "Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity," so I thought I'd republish the Executive Summary here. I'm also including a link where you can download the free Executive Summary as a pdf at the end of this post. This will be a longer post than usual, but I'm sure you'll find it worth your while.
Just what is the discipline of Marketing Operations (MO) and how well is it currently deployed in companies?
To answer these questions, Marketing Operations Partners, a thought leader and subject matter expert in MO, conducted a benchmark study, primarily among technology companies, to identify the following:
* Key drivers in the journey from MO inception to maturity in best practices.
* Relationship of formal MO Reviews to success of the MO function.
* Scope of MO practices across company characteristics, Marketing function characteristics, and MO function characteristics.
* Success factors and obstacles to progress for the MO function.
This report is intended to provide Marketing executives with new insights, a means for comparison with similar companies, and a valuable tool for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the MO function and, in turn, the overall Marketing organization.
A description of the study process, and definitions of MO and MO Reviews follow at the end of this Executive Summary.
Study Findings
This is a qualitative study with directional indicators of what technology companies are experiencing and addressing in their MO. The major findings are as follows:
* The MO function continues to evolve, with wide variance in both definition and scope.
* The study’s hypothesis, that effective MO reviews lead to more effective MO, which in turn improves Marketing, was confirmed by respondents. Formal reviews are instrumental to achieving MO maturity, and, in particular, for the proliferation of lessons learned, management between reviews, and balance between strategy and tactics.
* Nine key MO organizational challenges were ranked by respondents. From high to low priority, the top three areas of focus are:
o Measurement of marketing ROI and demonstration of Marketing value.
o Balance between Marketing strategy & tactics.
o Tying marketing success to the goals of other groups.
* On the path to improvement and maturity of the MO function, the key area of focus is increased accountability.
* The study results show that success in MO is closely tied to clarity, executive support, and effective process development and execution.
* Obstacles to MO success are often the inverse of MO success factors and include unsupportive culture, lack of follow-through, environment that penalizes risk-taking, and infrequent delegation.
* The companies identified as Marketing Operations Best Practice Firms have a formal MO function with a broad scope and strategic emphasis. Some characteristics they share are shown below:
Organizational Profile:
o Large, mature companies with medium-to-high financial performance and CMO tenure longer than the 26.8-month average.
o Marketing organization on par with or supervising the Sales organization, using direct and/or channel sales models.
Marketing Operations Focus:
o Measurement, planning, process improvements, Marketing IT, budget/financial management, marketing intelligence, Sales and other stakeholder alignment and socialization and communications are all cited as critical MO components by each Best Practice Firm
o Other focus areas common among Best Practice Firms include dashboards and scorecards, change management, lead management, campaign management, staff development, best practices and knowledge management, and Marketing governance.
Marketing Operations Reviews Characteristics:
o MO reviews typically are conducted onsite, take one-half day to three days, are conducted by the VP or CMO, and are also attended by Director, Manager, and Analyst levels.
o Marketing and Sales are the primary contributors or presenters at operations reviews, with occasional presentations by Finance, Service, HR, and GMs.
o Facilitators, dashboards, financials, and competitor data are leveraged as resources.
Following are this study’s key findings and insights:
The MO Evolution and Potential Impact on Organizations
1. As Marketing Operations evolves, its definition and scope expand.
2. Best Practice Firms focus on the sophisticated elements of Marketing Operations.
3. As the scope of MO progresses over time, it also moves toward increasing sophistication and value.
The MO Journey
4. Marketing Operations moves through stages of maturity to reach and optimize the use of sophisticated elements.
5. Marketing Operations scope differs according to company maturity.
6. High-priority Marketing Operations challenges emphasize metrics, strategy and cross-functional goals.
Key Factors in the MO Journey
7. Clarity & consistency, executive support, process management, and performance measurement are key to Marketing Operations success.
8. Unsupportive culture, lack of follow-through, risk-taking penalties, and infrequent delegation are obstacles to Marketing Operations success.
9. Accountability plays a key role in the journey to Marketing Operations maturity.
10. The journey to Marketing Operations maturity is driven by clear goals, formal reviews, and cross-functional interaction.
MO Reviews and MO Journey
11. Marketing operations reviews are instrumental to achieving Marketing Operations maturity.
Impact of Key Company Character Characteristics on MO Effectiveness
12. Large companies build Marketing Operations sophistication through process, automation, measurement, and change management.
13. Midsize companies build Marketing Operations sophistication through resource optimization and processes that address lead generation or compliance challenges.
14. Financial performance enables more sophisticated Marketing Operations and expanded Marketing Operations scope.
15. The phase of a company’s maturity may not determine its Marketing Operations effectiveness.
Impact of Marketing Stature Charter on MO Effectiveness
16. Relative stature of Marketing & Sales organizations relates to marketing’s ability to operate strategically, share knowledge, and leverage processes.
17. The balance between strategy and tactics relies on stakeholder alignment, knowledge management, and accountability.
18. Length of CMO tenure relates to ability to move forward with key Marketing Operations initiatives.
19. Selling model breadth provides opportunities for Marketing Operations added value.
Impact of Structure and Scope on MO Effectiveness
20. Formality of Marketing Operations function plays a role in marketing’s effectiveness and overall contribution to enterprise success.
21. Centralization of Marketing Operations function relates to the degree of balance between corporate control and local authority.
22. The scope of Marketing Operations function relates to marketing’s self-reliance.
Key Benchmarking Study Insights
1. The Best Practice Framework from Marketing Operations Partners provides a greater vision for Marketing
Operations value.
2. Marketing Operations Partners’ Best Practice Framework is validated by survey results.
3. Few companies have reached the “Sophisticated” level of Marketing Operations Partners’ Best Practice Framework in current practice.
4. The future impact of Marketing Operations depends on its ability to drive strategy, change, shared vision & enabling processes, measurement, accountability and results.
Conclusions
Marketing Operations Partners believes that MO is generally defined too narrowly and that a too-limited scope inhibits both the power and productivity that a company could otherwise realize. When too narrowly defined, the overall Marketing function is short-changed relative to the potential value-add of its MO practices.
Marketing Operations Partners sees a fully mature MO function as much more broadly defined, as shown in the Marketing Operations Partners’ Best Practice Framework (Figure 4). Within this framework, organizations move from the “Fundamental” level of MO functionality, through an “Expanded” level, and finally to a “Sophisticated” level of MO maturity. The process by which an organization reaches this sophisticated level is referred to as the “Journey to MO Maturity.”
Next Steps
When defined broadly, MO encompasses bodies of knowledge from a wide variety of fields both inside and outside of traditional Marketing. Examples of holistic marketing include change management, quality, manufacturing, organizational reengineering, IT, statistical analysis, customer experience management, enterprise resource management, knowledge management, and sales pipeline management.
Few companies possess the dedicated resources, subject matter expertise, and objectivity to address the full realm of MO completely on their own. Yet clearly, as evidenced from this study (and other studies from leading research firms such as International Data Corporation), companies need to evolve into new areas consistent with the Sophisticated MO scope.
These areas address the entire discipline of MO from “Strategy” (fact-based decision making) and “Guidance“ (competency development, marketing governance) to Process (LEAN Enterprise, Six Sigma, supply chain), “Metrics” (customer profitability, predictive analytics, enterprise metrics alignment), and “Technology” (enterprise marketing management, portfolio management). They also address the key drivers (change management, shared vision) that enable a Marketing organization’s successful collaboration and alignment with the key stakeholders that comprise its enterprise “Ecosystem.”
It is important to emphasize that none of these strategies or focus areas should be implemented in isolation, positioned as “magic bullets” or “quick fixes” or be viewed from a “one-size-fits-all” perspective. In evaluating for potential implementation insight from this and future MO studies, Marketing Operations Partners strongly advocates that the reader consider:
* The objectives of the enterprise
* The role Marketing will need to play to accomplish those objectives
* The organization’s culture, including its readiness for and tolerance of change
* The optimal leverage points (hottest or most visible issues, greatest pain)
* The availability of people and budget resources to tackle the problem
* C-level support for the initiatives that MO will undertake
Study Process
The findings in this study are based on an analysis of data from 81 companies. Of them, 38 are large or mid-size high-tech companies.
Marketing Operations Partners analyzed 26 companies that provided the most complete data in order to identify differences and commonalities in their Marketing Operations practices. A number of characteristics were reviewed, including the size of the company, level of company maturity, breadth and maturity of the Marketing Operations function, financial performance, industry focus (hardware, software or other), and type of sales model typically used. Marketing-oriented factors were also assessed, such as the tenure of the current Chief Marketing Officer (CMO), the company’s focus on strategic versus tactical marketing, and organization’s balance of focus on Marketing vs. Sales. Finally, we analyzed the self-reported structure of the Marketing Operations function within the organization (formal or informal, centralized or decentralized).
Definitions
Marketing Operations (MO) is a term used differently by different people. Marketing Operations Partners defines Marketing Operations as a thorough, end-to-end operational discipline that leverages processes, technology, guidance, and metrics to run the Marketing function as a profit center and fully accountable business. To drive achievement of enterprise objectives, Marketing Operations should:
* Reinforce marketing strategy and tactics with a scalable and sustainable enabling infrastructure
* Nurture a healthy, collaborative ecosystem both within and outside the marketing department
For purposes of this study, a Marketing Operations review is a focused process consisting of regularly scheduled meetings that are conducted by the Marketing function and aimed at aligning Marketing strategy with tactics and ensuring execution of Marketing strategy. These reviews are most typically conducted on a quarterly or annual basis and often roll up to C-level review processes.
Order the complete benchmarking study now
Want a more detailed look of what's inside the Benchmarking Study before you purchase? Download a pdf of the Executive Summary now to see the study's complete tables of Contents and Figures.
Measurement and Marketing Operations go hand-in-hand. Measurement is fundamental to successful Marketing Operations and a broad vision of Marketing Operations enables investment in the necessary infrastructure and ecosystem support to make measurement and metrics meaningful.
Pat LaPointe is one of the foremost experts on marketing measurement and dashboards. I'm a big fan of his and am grateful our companies are strategically aligned to mutually help companies struggling with Marketing Operations and Measurement. Pat is founder of MarketingNPV and author of Marketing by the Dashboard Lite, two essential resources for anyone serious about Marketing Operations and Marketing ROI.
Pat recently teamed with Aquent and the American Marketing Association to produce an on-demand webcast on a subject that's near and dear to my heart:
"Is Your Marketing an Expense . . . or an Investment"
10 Strategies for Winning Over Your CFO and other Marketing Skeptics
I highly recommend this webcast. You can learn more at http://www.marketingpower.com/webcast391.php
Gary
It's always good news when Marketing Operations gets some well-deserved ink from the mainstream marketing media. Despite growing interest, there's still comparatively little written about Marketing Operations and Google searches often take us to content that is way off the mark.
Yesterday, MarketingSherpa published Five Steps to Better Marketing Operations. MarketingSherpa's Sean Donahue did a superb job chunking down Marketing Operations Partners' 64-page benchmarking study, "Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity" into an easily-digestible article. And he didn't misquote me once (<:}.
Here's the article:
New Research - 5 Steps to Better Marketing Operations
SUMMARY: With marketers required to operate more like a business unit, more are turning to a formal strategy to manage the function. We got an exclusive peek at new research and tactics on what to expect when creating a Marketing Operations approach.
Includes marketing's biggest pain points and developing systems to address them. Plus, how to conduct regular MO reviews that will improve your marketing performance.
With pressure to make Marketing Departments more accountable for their actions and improve ROI, some companies have moved beyond informal strategic planning or campaign-by-campaign performance analysis to a formal Marketing Operations (MO) approach to run their departments.
A formal MO approach may be even more important than ever. With the average tenure of a Chief Marketing Officer now fewer than two years, it’s hard for companies to establish the kind of institutional knowledge that MO activities can provide. “There’s lots of movement among CMOs, so it’s tough to make moves that might not pay off for several years. Marketing departments tend to operate with a short-term focus,” says Gary Katz, CEO, Marketing Operations Partners.
Katz and his team recently conducted a survey of 81 companies asking how they manage their MO functions, what their primary objectives are and the key challenges they face. The executive summary of the report, “Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity: Best Practices in Operations Reviews among Technology Marketing Organizations,” will be available at the Marketing Operations Partners Web site Aug. 25 (see hotlink below).
Katz gave MarketingSherpa an exclusive look at the results, and we’ve highlighted five tactics that marketers can use to improve -- or establish -- their own MO function:
-> Tactic #1. Establish a formal MO function
Some marketers take an MO approach to their activities by default, assuming responsibility for parts, such as campaign measurements and budget management. But tackling sophisticated practices requires companies to have a formal MO function, comprising the appropriate staff and backed with appropriate resources.
For example, while an informal approach can handle some basic tasks, a formal MO function allows marketers to take on more sophisticated activities, such as campaign automation and predictive analytics, according to Katz’s research results.
Three tips on creating a formal MO function:
#1. MO is not a one-person job. You need a range of skill sets and job functions represented, including senior or VP-level executives, project managers, IT experts and researchers or analysts.
#2. MO needs its own budget to undertake technology initiatives, hire consultants or outside experts and purchase research for strategic planning.
#3. Don’t make the mistake of expecting immediate ROI. Katz’s research shows that investments in an MO function should be viewed as a long-term investment and requires a three- to seven-year payback.
-> Tactic #2. Broaden the MO scope
Because there’s no standard definition for Marketing Operations, marketers are left to decide which activities to include in the MO function. It turns out that many define the scope of MO too narrowly, often focusing on a few areas, such as measurement and planning.
To make your MO more effective, broaden the scope to cover not only the marketing department’s activities, but also how the department interacts with the entire company. Katz’s research identified a group of companies as “best practice” firms based on criteria that included having a broad scope for MO activities.
Best practice firms included the following nine areas in their MO efforts:
o Measurement
o Planning
o Process improvement
o Marketing IT
o Budget and finance
o Marketing intelligence, including research and analysis
o Socialization and communications within the organization to get buy-in for MO activities
o Stakeholder alignment
o Sales alignment
In addition to these, 80% of best practice companies also included dashboards and scorecards in their MO functions.
-> Tactic #3. Align MO goals with biggest marketing challenges
To set priorities for your MO function, look to your biggest marketing pain points and develop systems and practices that address them.
The top three priorities identified by participants in Katz’s survey were:
o Measuring marketing ROI and demonstrating value, 73%
o Balancing marketing strategy and tactics, 60%
o Creating common goals for marketing success tied with other groups, 57%
Not surprisingly, when respondents were asked to describe their MO practices, the answers tracked closely with those challenges:
- 65% said they currently practice marketing accountability (setting specific commitments, tracking and adjusting performance, etc.) to helps measure and demonstrate ROI.
- 62% said they use MO to balance big-picture, strategic planning with day-to-day marketing execution decisions.
- 64% said they use MO to leverage the value of other groups in the company who have a stake in marketing decisions.
-> Tactic #4. Get buy-in from senior management and outside departments
Bringing an operations focus to your marketing activities needs more than simply a commitment within the department. Buy-in from the company’s C-level management was cited as one of the six key factors in MO success by the companies in Katz’s survey.
Senior-level buy-in includes the CMO or Marketing VP in charge of the MO function, but can also extend to the CEO’s reinforcement of MO activities as a key driver of company profits. With the support of senior-level corporate executives, marketing activities can be better aligned with the company’s strategic planning and goals.
Working closely with other departments is also essential to a sophisticated MO function. A close review and improvement of marketing functions must include scrutiny of the marketing group’s interactions with sales, HR, finance, IT and product development, among others.
Examples of cross-department interaction cited by survey respondents include:
o Integration with the sales organization to tie sales objectives with MO goals
o MO personnel having early role with business units for product development ideas
-> Tactic #5. Conduct regular reviews to improve MO functions
Conducting formal reviews of MO operations is essential to achieving operational improvements. Reviews also can help balance strategic, long-term planning with day-to-day marketing execution. That’s why 85% of large and mid-sized technology companies and 80% of other types of companies surveyed said they conduct regular MO reviews.
Typical topics covered in these reviews include:
o Annual or quarterly marketing planning
o Budgeting and resource allocation
o Creative issues and brainstorming
o Education and team development
o Marketing portfolio investment evaluation
o Operations optimization
Those reviews should be managed by a high-level executive:
- 80% of large and mid-sized technology companies have reviews conducted by a VP or CMO.
- 85% of other companies have reviews conducted by a VP or CMO.
Quarterly or monthly reviews are the most common schedules:
- 60% of large and mid-sized technology companies hold quarterly reviews. 15% hold monthly reviews.
- 30% of other companies in the survey hold quarterly reviews. 20% hold monthly reviews.
Reviews should include participation from other departments. Presenters at MO reviews for large and mid-sized technology companies typically include:
o Marketing, 90%
o Sales, 50%
o Finance, 30%
o General managers, 30%
Presenters at MO reviews for other companies surveyed typically include:
o Marketing, 60%
o Sales, 50%
o Finance, 25%
o General managers, 30%
Useful links related to this article
Creative samples from the research report:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/cs/moprf/study.html
Marketing Operations Partners
http://www.mopartners.com Note to readers: I did have one small quibble with the interpretation of the data on Tactic #5:
While it's true that most MO reviews are conducted by a VP or CMO, especially in tech companies, it isn't necessarily a best practice for reviews be "managed by a high-level executive." In fact, turning over the reigns to an independent facilitator has significant advantages:
1. The VP/CMO can be an equal participant in the process
2. Indepedent facilitators are trained to focus on ensuring safety and broad participation, and are in a more natural positon to operate with detached objectivity
3. The potential increases for dialogue to enter unchartered territory, enhancing the potential for innovative and "out-of-the-box" contributions
Gary Katz
Today I'm pleased to reprint a great article called the "Science Side of Marketing and the Emergence of Marketing Operations" by Laura Patterson. Laura is on Marketing Operations Partners' advisory board, is president and founder of VisionEdge Marketing, Inc., and author of a superb book on marketing metrics called Measure What Matters: Reconnecting Marketing to Business Goals. If you're struggling with simplifying your metrics process and developing a cascading metrics strategy that tightly links with enterprise objectives (who isn't?), I highly recommend her book.
I was delighted when Laura decided to pipe in on the topic of my passion, Marketing Operations, for my favorite marketing publication, MarketingProfs. In order to reach its full potential, Marketing Operations must balance both the left- and right-brain side of Marketing. Laura does a great job of flushing out the sexy science side in the following article - Gary
The world's markets are becoming more and more efficient as the demand to drive inefficiency out of companies continues to expand—and dramatically impact the marketing organization.
As the increasing complexities and the rate of change continue to accelerate, marketing departments are becoming the center of attention. As a result, we face both external challenges from competition as well as internal challenges around people, process, systems, and tools.
To rise to these challenges, marketing is undergoing a transformation to enable it to improve its operational and business performance. The stronger the linkage between what we envision in our strategy and what we execute in the market place, the more we can ensure that marketing is providing value.
As a result, there has been a movement toward creating a marketing operations role to drive the connection between marketing strategy and execution and actual results.
The Rise of Marketing Operations
As the need for a more transparent, efficient, and accountable view of marketing became increasingly more important, the marketing operations function emerged. For example, across the technology sector, organizations began staffing and/or expanding the marketing operations role in the last two years, according to IDC.
The purpose of the function is both to increase marketing efficiency and to build a foundation for excellence by reinforcing marketing with processes, technology, metrics, and best practices.
Marketing operations enables an organization to run the marketing function as a fully accountable business. Marketing operations is about performance, financial management, strategic planning, marketing resource, and skills assessment and management.
If you are considering developing a marketing operations function, this article outlines some of the primary responsibilities. As the role has evolved, it has come to encompass the following five main responsibilities:
- Defining and managing systems and tools
- Developing and implementing metrics, infrastructure, and business processes
- Establishing and communicating best practices
- Managing the overall marketing budget and budgeting process
- Identifying and deploying technology to support performance measurement and reporting
Let's explore each of these areas and try to understand how each role functions and why they are important.
Process, Systems, and Tools
Process is the foundation for alignment—and one of the critical complaints with marketing is that it lacks alignment with sales, finance, and R&D. Therefore, it is essential for marketing to define and establish processes that facilitate alignment with these areas.
The role of marketing operations in terms of process, systems, and tools is to develop and manage an integrated process that includes setting performance goals, modeling, planning, and reporting. A marketing operations function should ensure that the right processes are in place to support performance management and measurement.
In addition, the marketing operations personnel should be able to define and secure the systems and tools needed to enable marketing operations. These tools and processes will analyze and identify overlaps, gaps, bottlenecks, and redundancies in order to suggest process improvements. These improvements will in turn support marketing's ability to help the organization achieve its goals and objectives.
It also falls to the marketing operation's function to develop the infrastructure and marketing systems that will promote the effective use of technology throughout the marketing organization. It will be imperative for the marketing operations staff to define, document, and standardize core marketing processes and collaborate with finance, sales, and R&D to ensure organizational alignment around the processes and well as performance targets.
Metrics and Measurement Reporting
Marketing dashboards and marketing operations are often linked together. It's important to understand why. Today there really is no shortage of data. The gap is in our ability to use this data to gain a sustained, competitive advantage and to drive specific business outcomes. To be successful, marketing needs both accurate historical data and the ability to recognize patterns that link seemingly unrelated data points.
One of our key challenges in marketing is to develop a baseline for metrics that helps us better evaluate performance and drive marketing decisions. Marketers need to understand measurement and create a metrics framework that links marketing to a bigger business objective.
Marketing measurement is about more than just the finances and payback; it is about creating value and growth. Therefore, it is critical to have a function that helps define the measurement system, process, and performance targets. Marketing operations fulfills this role while creating access to the data needed to create dashboards.
Because marketing operations creates a repository of information and facilitates implementing the systems, support, and infrastructure, it provides a much-needed focal point for performance management. The difference between success and failure is really not the dashboard, or even the information reflected in the dashboard, but what we do with the information and how we use this information to make decisions.
This truly is the point behind marketing metrics and marketing performance management: to use metrics to fine-tune investments, to manage the marketing mix, and to provide guidance and governance for decision making.
Marketing metrics should reflect the company's priorities and objectives, and the dashboards created by marketing operations should guide effective and timely decision making.
Dashboards synthesize our knowledge and highlight gaps. They visually align tactics, strategies, and objectives with business outcomes. They serve as a visual representation and guides for performance.
Best Practices
Marketing operations helps set realistic expectation of performance and accountability. For marketing to take a leadership role in an organization, it needs a set of core marketing and change management processes and practices. These will help to ensure that the marketing personnel know how to best use the processes, systems, and metrics.
Marketing operations needs to be the keeper of techniques, methods, activities, and processes that are effective at delivering a particularly superior outcome or result. As the keeper, marketing operations is responsible for the knowledge transfer, skills development, and benchmarking needed to sustain success.
Marketing's best practices need to be able to span activities and tactical execution around marketing campaign management, marketing and sales effectiveness tools, Internet and direct marketing, and market and customer research, as well as enterprise marketing management, brand and marketing resource management, digital asset management, and marketing process management.
Conclusion
The trend of demanding that marketing have great accountability shows no sign of abating. The need to be able to tie marketing activities and investments to results will continue. As a result, there will be continued pressure on marketing executives and professionals to demonstrate our understanding of how we are driving a company's brand value, incremental revenue, and customer equity.
As marketers we need to focus on developing and enhancing the science-side of our skill set and leveraging marketing operations either as a function or a discipline to create a culture based more on facts than intuition. Even with a marketing operations function, a marketing organization cannot be successful without embracing a performance-driven culture.
Such a culture requires knowledge to be accessible to everyone on the team so that each person has a view into the entire scope of work and visibility into the processes, budget, execution, metrics, and reporting needed. A performance-driven culture has an unwavering belief that performance starts with accountability.
Marketers in a performance-driven culture never lose sight of the need to be both efficient and effective and realize that metrics and measurement practices not only are essential to tracking performance but also are the means for improving results.
In our previous post, Jon Miller did a great job discussing th |
