Growing a World-Class Marketing Operations Function: From Nascence to Sophistication

In this second article in our four-part series, we will focus on more key aspects of the Marketing Operations journey as described in the 63-page report, Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity—Best Practices in Marketing Operations Series. Specifically, we’ll look in more depth at how companies evolve their Marketing Operations function from nascent to highly-sophisticated. From a combination of one-on-one interviews and primary and secondary research conducted last year, Marketing Operations Partners collected sufficient in-depth data to analyze 25 companies in terms of their MO maturity and effectiveness.

Key Findings

Four requirements that survey participants consider critical success factors in their journey to MO maturity: 1. Creating and positioning Marketing Operations based on an understanding of MO

fundamentals. 2. Gaining traction and momentum with a clear executive vision and steadfast commitment. 3. Achieving true MO maturity with a formal MO function and dedicated staff. 4. Using formal operations reviews effectively to enable accountability, cross-functional

cooperation and learning, recognition programs, and measurement of success. Leveraging the study insights, let’s take a closer look at what survey participants tell us about their own Marketing Operations journeys. What stages did they go through, what challenges did they face, and which factors have seemed most important as they’ve created MO functions and then moved them toward maturity and a fully valued ROI? It is interesting to note that only one of the companies surveyed has achieved MO “best practice” status, as characterized by process and execution excellence, strong brand identify, and a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of more than 20% over a five year period. Despite their apparent success, MO professionals within this “best practice” company would be the first to admit that they are still quite far from meeting their own internal expectations.

What is Marketing Operations and Why Is It Important? Marketing Operations (MO) is a term that is sometimes used differently across organizations. Marketing Operations Partners defines MO 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.

• Driving the achievement of enterprise objectives by reinforcing marketing strategy and tactics with a scalable and sustainable enabling infrastructure

• Nurturing a healthy, collaborative ecosystem both within and outside the marketing department that optimizes marketing’s value and fuels enterprise-wide success.

In this article, we will focus on responses to seven questions summarized in the Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity—Best Practices in Marketing Operations Series benchmarking study report, seeing what bubbles to the top for those marketing executives working “in the trenches” as they describe their MO journey and identify their most critical success factors.

How would you describe your journey to MO maturity, and what do you consider your most significant success factors?

1. The Importance of a Formal MO Function Survey participants agree that true MO maturity requires a formal MO function with a dedicated staff. The companies considered nascent in their MO maturity had no such function and made statements such as, “Operations is everyone’s job,” or “I have the MO responsibility by default.” In some cases this lack of focus, planning and accountability has led to a lack of executive support and unrealized investment. In other cases, it has stemmed from it.

2. Stages on the Path to MO Maturity Study participants describe three distinct stages on the path to MO maturity (Figure 1), with each playing a critical role as an organization thoughtfully introduces and matures its MO function.

1. Fundamental MO Maturity Stage—the period during which a formal MO function is established and core MO processes begin to be introduced within the organization.

2. Expanded MO Maturity Stage—the phase in which the MO function is gaining traction, expanding its reach and influence, and being more fully integrated into the organization’s ecosystem.

3. Sophisticated MO Maturity Stage—the period in which organizations move beyond expanded MO activities into sophisticated and best practice marketing operations. MO is tightly integrated with sales operations and is recognized as a valuable strategic asset and growth driver at the company level, sharing company-wide visibility, accountability and recognition with other core functions.

Figure 3

3. High Priority MO Challenges

Surveyed companies were asked to rank their MO challenges in order of priority. Measuring marketing ROI and demonstrating value topped the list. Other key challenges included achieving an optimal balance of strategy and tactics, negotiating shared goals and accountability with groups outside of marketing, and establishing marketing’s value with C-level executives.

A full list of rankings is shown in Figure 1 below. It is interesting to note that factors named as high priority challenges were also considered to be critical success factors. Survey results confirm that “best practice” companies are the ones that manage to overcome these challenges in ways that transform obstacles into opportunities, giving them market differentiation and competitive advantage.

Figure 2

4. Key Drivers in MO Journey to Maturity The results of this study indicate that creating and maturing a valued MO function requires a basic understanding of MO fundamentals and its potential return at executive levels of the enterprise. For MO to gain traction and momentum requires a clear executive vision and steadfast commitment, the investment in people and resources needed to deliver increasing benefits as MO matures over time, and metrics-based accountability around clearly articulated goals. Study participants highlight the importance of formal operations reviews that reinforce accountability, encourage recognition, proliferate lessons learned, and enable cross-functional cooperation and goal sharing. In the journey to Marketing Operations maturity, accountability clearly jumps out as a critical factor, along with a related area, fact-based decision-making (see Figure 3). In the early stages of MO development, respondents indicated that these were among the least consistently practiced disciplines but added that they played an increasingly critical role as their MO functions matured.

Figure 3

Conclusion Results of the recently published benchmarking study, Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity—Best Practices in Marketing Operations Series, tell us that survey participants attribute much of their MO success to a clear vision, shared goals, a supportive culture, an enabling infrastructure, the effective use of metrics, cross-functional cooperation and alignment, process refinement, thoughtfully deployed automation, and executive support. In this second article in our series, we have focused specifically on aspects of the MO journey that enable companies to move from nascence to sophistication — the phases that organizations typically go through as they internalize MO disciplines, refine MO processes, and optimize ROI to build increasingly mature MO function that can effectively deliver on aggressive corporate goals. Achieving MO excellence is well within the control of senior management, who can help their organization unleash the power of Marketing Operations with commitment and vision, an in-depth understanding of MO fundamentals, guidance from a trusted outsource partner, and effective, sustained execution.

Call to Action

If your company is facing challenges in any of the areas discussed in this article, or if you are thinking about creating a marketing operations function or increasing the effectiveness of the one you already have, you should start with a “current state assessment” that will help you evaluate the overall health of your marketing (and/or) Marketing Operations today. This will help you zero in on those areas that represent your most difficult challenges as well as your greatest opportunities for bringing the significant benefits of MO best practices to your organization.

For a free Executive Study of the “Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity” benchmarking study or to order the full report, visit www.mopartners.com.

About the Author: Gary M. Katz is founder and CEO of Marketing Operations Partners, the first ready-to-go COO and change management team dedicated to changing the MO of Marketing by escalating the Marketing Operations function to a Chief of Staff role and helping CMOs to operate like CEOs. The company brings together leading subject matter experts and thought leaders to enable clients to leverage process, technology, guidance, and metrics to run Marketing as a profit center and fully accountable business. For more information, visit www.mopartners.com.