2009 March | Marketing Operations at Work

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Marketing leaders today are in an unprecedented position to help organizations achieve their objectives in increasingly competitive and dynamic markets. Marketing Operations Partners is one the first services companies focused on changing the MO of marketing by leveraging the emerging discipline of Marketing Operations. To address this significant challenge—and opportunity - Marketing Operations Partners provides a ready-to-go COO and change management team consisting of leading thought leaders in the marketing community. Our team includes subject matter experts in the areas of lead generation and nurturing, customer experience management, process design, strategic planning process facilitation, technology assessment, organizational diagnosis, change management, ROI analysis, business intelligence, and marketing, sales and product alignment. For more information, visit www.mopartners.com.

March 26, 2009

PMI-MSSIG Marketing Ops Webcast Recording Now Available

Filed under: Marketing Operations Big Picture, Marketing Operations Education — Gary_Katz @ 2:08 pm

As many of you know, earlier this month I was the featured presenter in the webcast, “Marketing Operations: Where Project Management Meets Marketing”, sponsored by the Project Management Institute Marketing and Sales SIG (PMI-MSSIG). A recording of the webinar is now available at the PMI-MSSIG website.

This hour-long webinar provides a great overview of Marketing Operations (MO) for project managers and marketing professionals alike. In addition to explaining why project managers should embrace MO, the following topics are covered that are applicable to anyone who wants marketing to be a more strategic, integrated, accountable, valued function in the enterprise:

A definition of MO
The sphere of influence of MO
A detailed discussion of six top marketing challenges and how MO addresses them:
- Converting insight into value
- Accelerating sales/buying process
- Scaling marketing for growth
- Delivering the enterprise strategic agenda
- Optimizing customer profitability
- Demonstrating return on marketing
The MO Best Practice framework
The evolution of MO maturity
Building the case for a dedicated MO function
Why become an MO evangelist

During the second half of the webcast, I field some great questions from host Dave Hutchinson and several members of the audience.

I guarantee this will be a very well-spent hour of your valuable time. Check it out.

Gary

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March 22, 2009

Systems Thinking is Vital to Customer Experience Business Results

Filed under: Customer Profitability — Lynn Hunsaker @ 9:34 pm

I am a big fan of "The Fifth Discipline," the landmark book written by Peter Senge about learning organizations. So I'm especially pleased that my partner, Lynn Hunsaker, has chosen today to discuss systems thinking as it relates to customer experience. Systems thinking is not only one of Senge's five disciplines, it is indeed "The Fifth Discipline" — Gary

Systems Thinking is Vital to Customer Experience Business Results

by Lynn Hunsaker

"Do the whole job" is a mantra needed by our companies and society at large. Piecemeal efforts and short-term strategies ultimately lead to finger-in-the-dike management that is rampant today. All of the recent customer experience studies indicate that vital linkages are broken between:

survey results and business results
data and actions
goals across functions and business units
incentives and desired behaviors
multiple voice of customer sources
views of what customers want
brand promise and what's delivered

What's missing here is systems thinking! Systems thinking is a commitment to doing the whole job. It's a holistic view of the components of an entity in the context of relationships with each other and with other entities, rather than in isolation. Doing the whole job is imperative for real improvement in customer experience. Every internal handoff may have a ripple effect on the customer, or at least on the customer-facing employee. In other words, frontline employees are only as effective as the rest of the organization enables them to be.
Coordinated deployment is essential among the following keys to systems thinking:

keep the big picture in mind
anticipate cause-and-effect
analyze root causes
nurture shared vision
fight sub-optimization: self-centricity versus customer-centricity
manage stakeholders
manage change expressly
embrace constructive customer feedback
improve internal handoffs
enable each company group to learn their impact on customer experience
select metrics that are both actionable and predictive
balance incentives with intended outcome

Customer loyalty/retention was priority number one in the first four reports from The Conference Board's CEO Challenge survey. Recently that topic is superseded by execution, adaptability, economic performance, and sustained growth. Yet, 89% of firms view customer experience management (CEM) as either very important or critical to the firm's strategy in 2009, according to Forrester Research's Obstacles to Customer Experience Success report. Lack of systems thinking may account for the execution and adaptability hot buttons, as means to customer loyalty/retention, which if managed correctly, ultimately leads to stronger economic performance and sustained growth.

Perhaps the information age offers us too many options, and causes us to be sidetracked by piecemeal strategies, that ultimately become regarded as fads, although they may be valid and valuable components of the bigger picture. Systems thinking brings us back to basics. At the end of the day, superior customer experience is all about integrity. Doing the whole job reflects what's needed from every individual as well as the champions of customer experience management.

For more information, see Marketing Operations Customer Profitability Services.

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March 11, 2009

We need to professionalize the field of Marketing Operations

Filed under: Marketing Operations Big Picture — gary @ 9:34 pm

I've written in the past about the need for Marketing Operations professionals to have a place to congregate and learn from one another. We've made some progress and experienced some loss in this area over the past couple of years.

The loss is that Henry Stewart is no longer including Marketing Operations as part of its events agenda. Beth Weesner of Marketing Transformation Services, who was integrally involved with Henry Stewart from the beginning, has ended her association with the organization. I will not be continuing as Marketing Operations track chair for the Henry Stewart conference in 2009 after four years in that role.

On the other hand, one of the pioneer groups in the Marketing Operations field has stepped up its game. Since mid-last year, the Marketing Operations Cross-Company Alliance (MOCCA) has opened its quarterly meetings to all MO professionals — not just in-house practitioners. MOCCA also has a dedicated website and LinkedIn Group that is fully accessible to the public. MOCCA is now publishing its stated mission, which is to:

Foster a community for sharing practical experience
Encourage the professional development of Marketing Operations practitioners
Develop the Marketing Operations professional

I applaud the MOCCA board for taking this very important step in the right direction. We need leadership in this field and MOCCA is an integral player in providing it.

However, MOCCA alone is not going to take the Marketing Operations field where we need it to go.

Several constraints are inherent in the MOCCA model that limit its role in helping to professionalize Marketing Operations as a discipline:

1. MOCCA is committed to staying true to its original mission of supporting in-house Marketing Operations practitioners. This has and, by all indication, always will be the central focus of the organization. Solution providers, systems integrators, consultants, consulting firms, educators and other players are welcome, but we are clearly secondary stakeholders.

2. MOCCA, to this point, has limited its public activities to one meeting per quarter. A nice start, but far from the type of ongoing, multi-modal professional development that is needed.

3. MOCCA appears to be fully committed to providing free programming only, which is great for attendees but does not contribute to developing a more far-reaching business model that supports the entire Marketing Operations ecosystem. Professional development vehicles like on-site corporate training, online training, seminars, etc. are not an area of focus for MOCCA because the perception is that they might favor specific independent consultants or consulting firms that make their living selling services.

4. To date, MOCCA has been primarily aimed at technology companies and its activities have been largely restricted to those people in the Silicon Valley. MOCCA has made a conference call facility available for its meetings, but all planned activities are held in locations convenient to those in the San Francisco Bay Area.

5. MOCCA hasn't indicated any intent to fill the vacuum Henry Stewart left by establishing a dedicated Marketing Operations conference (which Henry Stewart never truly did anyway, since their MO Conference was co-hosted with the Digital Asset Management Conference), again probably because such an even doesn't fit the MOCCA business model.

So what should we do, knowing that MOCCA is a great resource and an important player, but does not have a charter that is aligned with some of these more holistic requirements?

One of the concepts I've been floating since last Fall that has received a lot of endorsement (though not specific underwriting support to get off the ground just yet) is establishing a Marketing Operations Institute. The institute would be responsible for professionalizing the discipline, working hand-in-hand with MOCCA, educational institutions, corporate sponsors, technology solution providers, consulting firms and individuals, etc. to develop industry standards, a professional training curriculum, certification programs, online courses, etc., as well as coordinated educational events (webinars, seminars, workshops, conference, corporate training, etc.).

This is a lot to bite off, so a group of us are are interested in staging a one- or two-day Marketing Operations Conference here in Silicon Valley. The purpose of the conference would be to evolve and develop a shared vision for the field of Marketing Operations. At a high level, we'd seek to come out of the conference with an agreed-upon roadmap to advance best practices in Marketing Operations and promote the value of MO to business leaders. An exciting aspect of the conference is the opportunity for each individual participant to be a co-creator in the development of our field.

So what do you think? Good idea? Are you with us?

If you're even a little just bit inspired, please speak up. Better yet, contact me directly. We have a chance to create a more sustainable, rewarding opportunity for everyone by working together. We need you to make this vision a reality.

Gary

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