Marketing operations is in the midst of a major revolution. While the tools of marketing have changed dramatically over the past 25 years, the operational systems and processes have remained relatively stagnant. Most organizations use desktop productivity tools and e-mail to plan, deliver and ultimately execute their marketing activities.
W H I T E P A P E R 0 to 90 in Four Easy Steps:
A Marketing Operations Maturity Model
JUNE 2008
Marketing operations is in the midst of a major revolution. While the tools of marketing have changed dramatically over the past 25 years, the operational systems and processes have remained relatively stagnant. Most organizations use desktop productivity tools and e-mail to plan, deliver and ultimately execute their marketing activities. This is not necessarily a best practice, but a kind of "stalwart tradition" that has been passed on from marketing department to marketing department through the decades.The good news is that companies all over the world are moving from paralysis to action. Gartner re-search in 2007 concluded that by the year 2010, 2,500 companies will have implemented some type of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) software--the application used to automate marketing operations. Most of these companies will start small and take a crawl, stand, walk, run approach that will ultimately grow their investment based on the return they glean from "Aprimo has developed a Marketing their initial efforts. Operations Maturity Model that will Many marketing organizations that are starting out on their journey to im-proved operational effectiveness would like a roadmap that will help them help shed a light on the path that lies in compare themselves to others who have already begun the journey. Based on front of organizations that have made a its experience with more than 200 companies on this trajectory, Aprimo has choice to elevate their ability for marketing developed a Marketing Operations Maturity Model (MOMM) that will help to deliver value." shed a light on the path that lies in front of organizations that have made a choice to elevate their ability for marketing to deliver value.Maturity models have been developed for a wide variety of technology and business processes. They aggregate the experiences that many organizations have gone through from the growth curve of ad hoc and unstructured processes to a highly optimized end state. The MOMM developed by Aprimo provides the following benefits:. It communicates to everyone involved that improvements in marketing operations come through a systematic and multiphase approach. -- A single "process improvement project" will not deliver the value that is sought after.. It gives everyone a place to start from. -- Oftentimes organizations that have severely broken operational processes are overwhelmed by the task ahead. The MOMM breaks the mountain down to a series of steps that can be con-quered over a period of several years.. It provides a framework for prioritizing actions. -- Organizations are always faced with the challenge of allocating resources to these types of ef-forts. The MOMM helps to focus these investments on steps that will allow the achievement of next steps.. It allows organizations to understand the experiences and challenges that other companies have faced in their journey to marketing effectiveness.-- The knowledge gained from other companies tackling the MOMM will validate their decision and help to inform and guide the MOMM initiative.. Finally, the MOMM provides a means of assessing an organization's success. -- The accumulated data allows comparisons across multiple companies top provide a benchmark from which to measure success.Organizations that begin a journey of this type will face numerous challenges and obstacles before they reach their ultimate success level. In talking with companies all over the world, the struggle for progress is universal and can sometimes be overwhelming. With average tenure of a Chief Market-ing Officer now under two years (and shrinking), the need for operational enhancements to provide transparent value is higher than ever before. When new leadership arrives on the scene, process own-ers can show how they are aligned to one of the steps in the MOMM. When other organizational changes occur-ranging from tactical reorganizations all the way to broad consolidation of multiple marketing organizations-huge pressure is placed on the marketing organization to move in a new direction. Again, the MOMM can serve as an anchor to stay the course in turbulent times.W H I T E P A P E R
The MOMMThe MOMM is based on the ISO 9000 marketing maturity model that has been used extensively by companies to evaluate the effectiveness of their processes relative to a global standar... [download for more]
