Rating: 5.00 (2 reviews) | Rate this:

This post has been viewed 830 times

In research conducted for its 2007 “Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity Benchmarking Study,” Marketing Operations Partners uncovered the following keys to Marketing Operations (MO) success:

Winning Executive Buy-In and Cultural Support is Crucial

The Marketing Operations function can only thrive when it secures the support of key stakeholders by demonstrating marketing accountability, and generally operates within a supportive culture. MO is most effective when it is tightly integrated with Sales Operations, and is highly regarded within the enterprise for its value and contribution. Ideally, an organization’s CMO, or top ranking marketing executive, looks to Marketing to deliver key strategic and tactical initiatives, which are considered an essential part of the C-level team’s agenda and endorsed and supported from the top of the organization to the grassroots.

Best practice companies recognize that the MO function needs to be viewed as a valuable strategic asset at the company level. It needs to share company-wide visibility with other core functions and be an integral part of quarterly reviews and dashboards that are managed by the CMO and rolled up to an enterprise level. With full executive buy-in and support, the MO function should be sitting at the table with other functional executives, proactively participating as new directions are being debated, new product ideas are being developed and strategically important projects are being funded. In the words of one survey respondent, “Business units appreciate MO’s proactive stance and contributions….and milestones are both celebrated and widely promoted as points of success.”

Clarity and Consistency Fuel Marketing Operations Excellence

A clear shared vision, a common lexicon and consistency in execution separate MO leaders from the rest of the field. Best practice companies work collaboratively and interdependently, employing consistent business practices with common performance measures, reporting methods and metrics. The best performing companies have an enterprise-wide dashboard at a corporate level, with each functional area setting goals and measuring performance for their key deliverables. Marketing and Sales functions are aligned around revenue growth targets, and one set of metrics integrates and aligns all functions with high-level goals. Success is driven by clear process definition and processes to ensure that metrics are consistent, meaningful and credible.

Process Refinement and Automation Bring Bottom Line Benefits and Improved Marketing ROI

As “best practice” companies refine their Marketing Operations, they see increasing numbers of opportunities for cost savings and efficiency gains. They can identify and eliminate sources of waste resulting from poor planning, redundancies and expedited execution. They can break the inertia around bottlenecked programs and get sponsorship to move strategically important efforts forward. In their own words, survey participants report that:

• “Things are smoother because we’re all on the same page,”
• “We’ve implemented an annual operating plan and strategy with bottoms-up and tops-down forecasting, creating common repeatable processes and templates,”
• “We’re becoming more effective and efficient, and have a good process for stopping what does not add value.”

Process automation also plays a key role in streamlining MO in many organizations:

• “We are fairly aggressive compared to our competitors in our integrated marketing approach regarding web, print, and face-to-face customer contact.”
• “With Salesforce.com, we can show Sales exactly which campaign generated the lead, what was sent, etc.”
• “We have been putting in backend infrastructure, for example, a lead management module on top of PeopleSoft CRM that collects and tags 80%-90% of leads generated.”
  

With MO process refinement and automation, Marketing Operations’ contribution will be positioned to grow steadily over time.

Some or all of the content contained in this white paper was contributed by Gary M. Katz, CEO of Marketing Operations Partners (www.mopartners.com)