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...
