what is marketing operationsMarketing Operations is the science and art of optimizing efficiency and effectiveness of the Marketing organization. The purpose of marketing operations is to increase organizational efficiency, agility, and value.

Growth of the marketing operations (MO) function was initially driven by the proliferation of marketing technology and increased pressure from the C-suite to prove the value of marketing and contribute to the bottom-line.

Marketing Operations unleashes order and propels the impact of Marketing:

  • Unleash Order: Free Marketing of the alignment and accountability challenges of activity treadmills, waste, silos and stakeholder conflict.
  • Propel Impact: Rise to the organizational agility nimbleness challenges of matching enterprise capability to evolving market needs.

Marketing agility is the ability to adapt marketing efforts rapidly in anticipation of changing customer behavior, market conditions and business direction.

Extensive insights are available in the Journey to Marketing Operations Maturity benchmarking study. (see the Executive Summary)

Marketing Operations applies these competencies cross all Marketing disciplines:

  • Workflow design
  • Process improvement
  • End-to-end management
  • Change management
  • Systems thinking
  • Balanced scorecards
  • Data management
  • Quantitative analysis
  • Organizational learning
  • Knowledge management
  • Stakeholder analysis
  • Competency development
  • Modeling
  • Quality tool-kit

What is the future of Marketing Operations?

Whereas typical Marketing Operations (MO) practices focus on metrics dashboards, resource/asset management, and automation of marketing processes — the future of Marketing Operations has greater impact on the company’s success by integrating Marketing strategy, guidance, processes, metrics, ecosystem and technology, with the aim of running the Marketing organization as a value center, driving long-term company growth.

marketing operations model

Strategy
Guidance
Process
Holistic vision, fact-based decision-making.
Competency development, marketing governance.
Lean enterprise, six sigma, supply chain.
Metrics
Technology
Ecosystem
Infrastructure
Profitability, predictive analytics, enterprise metrics alignment.
Enterprise marketing management, portfolio management.
Successful collaboration with key stakeholders.
Back-end integration of processes, metrics, technology.

ClearAction Continuum can guide you in applying this strategic approach to your initiatives in customer profitability, business intelligence, buying process acceleration, marketing scalability, marketing strategy execution, and return on marketing investment.

“The marketing operations role has been the fastest growth job area in tech marketing over the past few years. Today, the average large tech vendor devotes about 7% of its staff to marketing operations. IDC believes that the overall growth rate of this role will slow but that the job function will become more strategic and influential. The next two to three years will see the best tech marketing leaders undergoing this reassessment of marketing operations.” Richard Vancil, VP, Executive Advisory Group, IDC

The Power of Marketing Operations

See the history of Marketing Operations in the Wikipedia article: Marketing Operations.

Schedule a call with us to learn how ClearAction Value Exchange and Advisory can elevate your Marketing Operations: