Why You Are Not Organized For Effective Marketing Automation (Part 3)

Roles and Responsibilities In Your Demand Center Organization

Overview: Converting from traditional Marketing to automated Marketing has a major impact on your organization’s Marketing team. This requires establishing the correct type of organization to achieve your goals.

Tags: Marketing Automation, Marketing Automation Organization, Demand Center, Demand Center Organization

We learned last week that each of the organizational models is best suited to overall business goals and the existing organization’s tolerance for new skills and change. In that exercise, we reviewed a short survey of characteristics that might help shape the direction of your organization towards one of the three models: a) Integrated Automation, b) Distributed Demand Center, or c) Centralized Demand Center.

As one might expect, individual roles and responsibilities differ in each of the three models. In fact, the expectations of the same title in one model may vary widely from expectations in another. As expectations vary, so then would the related skill sets and demeanors of the individuals in those positions. To begin, let’s look at the high-level expectations for Marketing Operation within each of the three models.

Form these high-level expectations we can see two parallel tracks of proficiencies inversely proportional to each other as they progress from Centralized to Integrated.

Although specific skill sets within individual organizations may vary, in general the skill sets required of the Demand Center team grows as the Demand Center organization is more centralized. One thing to keep in mind, however, is the overall organizational skill set does not vary all that much. All of these categories of skills are required. What varies is where in the organizational reporting structure those skill sets reside.

Notes:

Although MAP system administration shows as constant across all three organizational models, the makeup of that administration generally changes as expectations change. In general, the Integrated Demand Center model, being the most distributed by definition, maintains a simpler MAP technology platform. These organizations tend to be more reactive and tactical, requiring a system that is easy for field marketers to execute against in short cycles.

Centralized Demand Centers tend to maintain more complex technology infrastructure, utilizing more external system integrations, cloud connectors and plugins. The implications of this complexity require a very disciplined approach to Campaign execution, only achievable by teams intimately familiar with the detailed operations of the infrastructure.

The more distributed your model, the more you must plan to manage communications over process. The reasons for adopting a distributed model (see Part 2 of this series) are all around agility and responsiveness to the needs of the field. This precludes tight, restrictive (or perceived as restrictive) process and discipline.

The more centralized your model, the more you must plan to manage process and procedures to minimize required communications. The reasons for adopting a centralized model are efficiency, scalability and repeatability. These must be shaped into assembly-line processes that can be executed effectively and efficiently.

In next week’s edition, we will look at your options for staffing to your Demand Center model. Should you hire or train? That is the question. And the answers may surprise you!