Marketing Operations at Work

Invitation to Participate in Marketing Operations Best Practices Survey

Marketing Operations Partners is updating its Best Practices Benchmarking Study. The goal of the study, Marketing Operations 2.0: Taking MO to the Next Level of Effectiveness, is to identify: 

• Key drivers in the journey from MO inception to maturity in best practices 
• Scope of MO practice across different organizations based on company characteristics, Marketing function characteristics and MO function characteristics
• Success factors and obstacles to progress for the MO function 
• How organizations assess their effectiveness based on Marketing Operations strategy, process, technology, guidance and metrics.
• How Marketing Operations is evolving within organizations and as a professional discipline

An online survey is available now through July 17, 2009. This survey will take only 15 – 20 minutes to complete and your responses will be kept 100% confidential. In appreciation for your time, we will e-mail you a PDF of the executive summary of the benchmarking study, if you provide your email address at the end of the survey.

Go to the online survey now.

Qualified organizations that participate in face-to-face or telephone interviews to complement the survey will be eligible to receive a PDF of the entire study once published. Please let me know if you are interested in participating.

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Gary

Give Marketing Operations a Little Love, BusinessWeek Gurus!

BusinessWeek columnist, Marshall Goldsmith, is author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Succession: Are You Ready?" and the New York Times and WSJ bestseller, "What You Got Here Won't Get You There." He also pens a column for BusinessWeek called Marshall & Friends. This week, Goldsmith wrote about "Marketing in the Age of Turbulence," in which he interviewed well-known marketing guru and author Philip Kotler. Goldsmith did a great job setting up the interview and Kotler delivered great wisdom, but a real opportunity was missed. Neither gave credit to the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations as a way to navigate through the waves of change. That inspired me to post of comment on the BW site. I hope MO wins a few more evangelists as a result. But it woudl have been so much more powerful if the likes of Goldsmith and Kotler would have used their pulpit to give MO some love.

Here's the comment I posted:

Adding some left-brain people to the marketing department addresses just part of the problem. What about short CMO tenure? And what about a lack of operational focus? Interesting that early on in his article Marshall casually uses the term "marketing operations" to describe marketing departments, yet fails to mention the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations (MO), a key enabler to delivering the strategic and accountable marketing he envisions. We need CMOs and CEOs with the vision to invest in dedicated MO functions that effectively operate as the CMO's Chief of Staff. Especially in complex organizations, MO is integral to bridging strategy to execution, and aligning marketing with the C-suite and other stakeholders throughout the enterprise (such as sales, finance, IT, customer experience). Most organizations are missing the opportunity to change the MO of marketing by fully embracing MO. This is a shame because MO done right can hugely impact an enterprise's business intelligence, sales enablement, pipeline velocity, scalability, brand governance, customer experience, ability to demonstrate marketing ROI, and agility to navigate the winds of change.

Come on Marshall and Philip, start treating Marketing Operations as a beloved brother or sister of marketing, not an ugly stepsister or neglected orphan, locked in the parlor doing the chores no one else wants to touch. If you play your cards right, your Cinderella-in-waiting could evolve into your CMO's indispensable Chief of Staff.

Gary

Marketing Operations? In IT??

Today the newest member of the Marketing Operations Partners team is penning a post for us. Many of you may know Michael Dortch from his work as an industry analyst for Aberdeen Group and Robert Frances Group. The old-timers amongst us may even recall his journalism days with CMP publications NetGuide and Communications Week. Michael is uniquely qualified to write about the opportunity for Marketing Operations and IT to align for the greater good, so enjoy the first of what I'm sure will be many great posts – Gary

by Michael Dortch

Should IT be embracing Marketing Operations? Should MO be embracing IT?

Sure!

At its heart, Marketing Operations is about bringing some adult supervision to some of the most highly personal, visceral, and therefore non-standardized activities conducted by any business -- not to mention some of the most business-critical. To succeed, therefore, Marketing Operations professionals must do a lot of successful marketing, selling, and evangelizing to multiple constituencies within their own organizations, if their efforts are to show any benefits to the enterprise's external relationships with customers, partners, and prospects.

Oddly enough, highly parallel challenges face every IT department that's striving to be truly business-driven and to supply truly effective business tools and solutions. What's more, almost every business action, decision, and transaction is enabled or supported by some kind of IT. And at many enterprises I've known, the IT departments actually have the most experience in formalizing, documenting, maintaining, and refining key processes and practices.

All of this means that Marketing Operations professional and evangelists should forge good working relationships with IT decision-makers at their enterprises at the earliest possible opportunity. The combination of the two can and should lead to many new opportunities to "IT-enable" efforts at increasing profitability, customer and partner satisfaction, "return on marketing" and IT ROI.

At the very least, it will make for conversation over meals or drinks refreshingly different...