Approximately 25 leaders from Silicon Valley-basedcorporations, marketing automation solution providers, marketing and project management consulting firms, and academia met in San Francisco on April 23 to pave the path for the future of the Marketing Operations field. The initial output from the effort was the establishment of the Marketing Operations Future Forum, which will act as a steering committee on moving forward withagreed-upon industry initiatives.
Dave Hutchinson, chair of the Project Management Institute Marketing & Sales SIG, which sponsored the luncheon, opened by discussing the synergy between Project Management and Marketing Operations. Then, I shared my vision of where we are and where we could be by professionalizing our field. Here are the key areas I covered:
- MO field still defining itself
- Major stakeholder, CMO role, also struggling with definition
- Opportunity to develop the profession
- Standardization, certification track, training & development model
- Grow the pie
- Have more impact in enterprise
- Opportunity to practice what we preach
- Better alignment & collaboration
- Better integration of talent and technology supply chain
- Clearer path for customers to find and get help
- Key question: As a profession, are we breaking or perpetuating silos with current MO?
- Some of the topics the group discussed included:
- The need for training and development model that is international and crosses geographies
- The desire to create an MO Conference that creates energy and professional development.
- The possibility of making content developed by the Marketing Operations Cross Company Alliance available through this effort to facilitate Marketing Operations education and, possibly, certification. MOCCA co-founder and steering committee member, Larissa DeCarlo of Marketing Transformation Services, was in attendance.
- The possible establishment of a Marketing Operations Institute, which would potentially be started by offering online certification in Marketing Operations.
- The possible development of a Google KNOL with a special section on Marketing Operations.
- Alignment and potential
- Overall, the discussion was lively and productive, and, indicative of the interest in this topic, nearly 50 people have joined the Marketing Operations Future Forum LinkedIn Group within 24 hours of being established.by Gary M. Katz, Founder and Chairman at Marketing Operations Partners
