Slide 16: To set up how Marketing Operations addresses the challenge and opportunity I’ve been discussing, let’s look at the forces that are formalizing M.O.: Demand for accountability and return on investment Emphasis on value creation and innovation Striving to increase customer profitability Motivation to achieve enterprise strategic agenda Challenge of scaling marketing for growth One area that extends across all of these challenges is the need to align with various stakeholders And, of course, we are constantly facing expectations to meet accelerating demands with frozen or tentative budgets These are contemporary challenges of most businesses, and the good news is that Marketing Operations provides tools and solutions to address these challenges.
Slide 20: Marketing Operations is a complex topic, integrating what is already a broad and rapidly expanding body of knowledge with insight from a variety of other fields. Marketing Operations borrows techniques from the fields of change management, quality, manufacturing, organizational reengineering, IT, statistical analysis, enterprise resource management, knowledge management, and more.
Slide 23: A CEO has a COO A COO has a production lead A CFO has a controller A CSO has a sales operations leader It’s high time Marketing had an operational leader
Slide 25: Surveyed companies were asked to rank their MO challenges in order of priority. Measuring Marketing ROI and demonstrating value top the list. Other key challenges include achieving an optimal balance of strategy and tactics and setting common goals with groups outside of marketing with which marketing has no authority over but significant interdependency.
Slide 26: The study also uncovered Marketing Operations success factors and obstacles. Marketing organizations that successfully win cultural support tend to have clearer goals and better execution consistency, which is supported by performance measurement and process improvement. On the other hand, poor follow-through, penalizing risk-takers and infrequent delegation of authority are common obstacles in moving forward.
Slide 27: In the journey to Marketing Operations maturity, accountability jumps out as one of the areas where significant progress has been made. Note that Accountability, and a related area, Fact-Based Decision Making, were each among the least consistently practiced disciplines on inception of the MO program and also have significant stretch goals over the coming year.
Slide 28: Several factors were cited by participants as contributing to MO success to date and in going forward. The study findings depict the relationship between clear goals, formal ops reviews and cross-functional interaction in improving performance in marketing accountability, management between reviews and balancing of strategy and tactics. These improvements, in turn, spur the MO team forward in its journey toward maturity.
Slide 31: A framework helps provide focus and is instrumental to socialize new concepts, such as Marketing Operations. Marketing Operations Partners’ Best Practice framework provides a clear vision of what Marketing Operations can be and how it can most optimally contribute to achieving enterprise objectives. The model starts with enterprise strategy to which marketing strategy must be aligned. From strategy comes guidance, including business intelligence/knowledge, vision, mission, values, charter, norms, policies, procedures, best practices and so on. Guidance is key to developing process, from which metrics can be developed. Everything is supported by technology. Process, technology and metrics comprise the infrastructure management components while strategy and guidance enable alignment of the ecosystem in which MO operates.
Slide 32: Marketing Operations has a significant opportunity to help CMOs and their teams drive strategic leadership, facilitate shared vision and leverage infrastructure to achieve enterprise objectives. The blue boxes show some of the verbatim comments from participants about their vision and their high-level prescription for driving MO forward.
Slide 33: From a combination of one-on-one interviews and primary and secondary research, we collected sufficient in-depth data to analyze 25 companies in terms of their Marketing Operations maturity and effectiveness. A small percentage of those companies emerged as MO Best Practice companies, characterized by process and execution excellence, strong brand identify and a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of more than 20% over a 5 year period.
Slide 34: One of the keys to achieving process excellence is Marketing playing an active role in enterprise planning. Some of the characteristics of excellent planning include: Marketing plan reflects corporate plan * Top-to-bottom cascaded execution, including Individual accountability for each aspect of the plan * Strong change management and contingency management * Competency development
Slide 35: Another key area in process excellence is budgeting and budget management. Some of the characteristics of budgeting excellence include: Alignment with corporate strategies, supported by measurable, tactical activities (a strong cultural focus on measurement and accountability) Demonstrated year-over-year results in market growth, sales & revenue growth and profitability that can be tied directly to marketing activities - Proves a positive return on marketing investments
Slide 36: Effective customer management is also integral to process excellence. Companies demonstrating excellence in this area have well-defined profitability profiles, an advanced segmentation model and a comprehensive channel strategy. They understand the profitability of their customer base and product offerings, and make adjustments in their marketing mix, distribution partners and sales process to focus on the winners.
Slide 37: Effective management of the enterprise brand is another driver of process excellence. Companies strong in this area have developed brand equity through a holistic and integrated marketing effort that addresses internal, societal and key stakeholder audiences. These companies have a formalized governance process that promotes advancement of the brand.
Slide 38: Effective product lifecycle management is also a fundamental aspect of process excellence. Leveraging marketing intelligence and cross-functional alignment, these companies have exhibited mastery in optimizing the four Ps at different stages of the lifecycle, enabling them to consistently outperform the competition.
Slide 39: Execution excellence is a challenge to all the surveyed companies, even the Best Practice leader. One of the indicators of execution excellence is predictive analytics, which enables companies to plan and manage the pipeline more effectively. Keys to effective predictive analytics include: * A robust customer database at the foundation Both customer and sales data A forward-looking perspective Win-loss analysis as an ongoing discipline
Slide 40: Most allusive even in Best Practice companies is alignment of sales and marketing. Effective sales alignment involves a well defined role for each organization at every stage of the sales funnel. Best practices companies are accelerating this alignment with tactics that require teaming and real-time measurement to execute a marketing program in the (selling) field.
Slide 44: But we know from experience as parents that 13 year-olds are anything but adults in how they operate in the world. According to Wikipedia, adults exhibit the following traits of maturity: - Self-control - restraint, emotional control. - Stability - stable personality, strength. - Independence - ability to self-regulate. - Seriousness - ability to deal with life in a serious manner. - Responsibility - accountability, commitment and reliability. - Method/Tact - ability to think ahead and plan for the future, patience. - Endurance - ability and willingness to cope with difficulties that present themselves. - Experience - breadth of mind, understanding. - Objectivity - perspective and realism. My daughter is 13 and her Bat Mitzvah is May 3 but she exhibits mastery of very few of these qualities at this time.
Slide 51: Unlike incremental learning, which is typical of adolescents, in the context of business generative learning is a style of organizational learning that encourages experimentation, risk-taking, openness, and system-wide thinking. Organizations have successfully used this style of learning to transform themselves in the face of technological, social, and market change. Adaptive learning is a contrasting approach to organizational learning.
Slide 53: Every member of the Marketing Operations Partners team has 20+ years experience in Marketing, bring both strategic and execution expertise to every engagement, as well as a balance of entrepreneurial spirit combined with a deep commitment to customer delight. Our job is to help you and your MO team: Get challenging MO initiatives off-the-ground and running effectively while ensuring sustainability Mentor and train your key people how to do it themselves so you can develop internal expertise and competency, and Provide strategic and operational sound counsel on how to organize to best move forward to accomplish key objectives. Leveraging our broad and extensive experience and subject matter expertise in all facets of MO
Slide 54: Every member of the Marketing Operations Partners team has 20+ years experience in Marketing, bring both strategic and execution expertise to every engagement, as well as a balance of entrepreneurial spirit combined with a deep commitment to customer delight. Our job is to help you and your MO team: Get challenging MO initiatives off-the-ground and running effectively while ensuring sustainability Mentor and train your key people how to do it themselves so you can develop internal expertise and competency, and Provide strategic and operational sound counsel on how to organize to best move forward to accomplish key objectives. Leveraging our broad and extensive experience and subject matter expertise in all facets of MO
MO Impact Depends on its Ability to Drive Strategy, Change, Accountability Metrics Process Guidance Ecosystem Alignment Infrastructure Management Technology Strategy
Significant implications for socialization, winning buy-in, mission and charter definition, values clarification, cross-functional alignment, etc.
Team Learning in MO
Defined: Aligning individual and team learning through a commitment to a balance of dialogue and discussion
Overcomes “groupthink”
Facilitates breaking through internally-imposed barriers and “getting” the big lesson
Significant implications for decision-making, marketing competency development, knowledge management, marketing intelligence, planning, process design, socialization, program evaluation, etc.
Systems Thinking in MO
Defined: Learning to view the system as a whole rather than focusing on discrete parts
Can be used to manage overwhelm from complexity and overcome “learned helplessness”
Requires a balance of linear and non-linear thinking
Significant implications in marketing intelligence, knowledge management, MO assessments, product portfolio and marketing mix management, process design, marketing IT, leveraging VoC, demonstrating return on marketing , etc.
How Marketing Operations Partners Provides Value to Clients:
We are a think tank of diverse subject matter experts who collectively bring a holistic view of how to integrate previously-independent efforts into a cohesive MO strategy
We are your co-creator through professional facilitation of your MO roadmap and charter
We are the alignment specialist and change catalyst to help win stakeholder buy-in and commitment from groups within and outside marketing authority
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