Marketing Operations

Marketing Operations is a relatively new discipline within the Corporate Marketing function. Its existence was first recognized 15 years ago by research firms such as IDC and SiriusDecisions. Early adopters were high tech companies such as Cisco Systems, Symantec, and Adobe. Today, hundreds of companies across a variety of industries staff a Marketing Operations role within the Corporate Marketing function.

The scope of responsibilities varies across Marketing Operations teams and so, therefore, does the definition. Here are definitions of the discipline. Examples include:

IDC: The purpose of the Marketing Operations function is both to increase marketing efficiency and to build a foundation for excellence by reinforcing marketing with processes, technology, metrics, and best practices. Marketing operations enables an organization to run the marketing function as a fully accountable business. Marketing operations is about performance, financial management, strategic planning, marketing resource, and skills assessment and management.

SiriusDecisions: Marketing operations is responsible for the capture and dissemination of marketing information to the enterprise, be it performance metrics, data or strategy/planning and initiatives and budgets, as well as the systems and processes that help generate this information in a systematic, predictable fashion. It drives both visibility into – and productivity for – the marketing organization, which in turn benefits the functions that work with marketing on a regular basis.

MarketingProfs: 5Ts = Total Strategy, Techniques and Processes, Tracking and Predictive Modeling, Technology, Talent.

Typically, Marketing Operations is the function responsible for marketing performance measurement, strategic planning and budgeting, process development, professional development, and marketing systems and data. This work either connects closely to, or includes, demand generation. It also involves the alignment of Marketing with Sales, Business Units, and Finance. Marketing Operational professionals are not classical marketers. Instead of coming from PR or branding backgrounds, they typically come from Finance, IT, Sales Operations and other analytical or process-oriented roles.