While most marketing organizations are taking the plunge into marketing automation tools, social media and CRM (usually through sales), they're not yet investing in data management and reporting tools to help to make these investments pay.
These were among the findings of exclusive new research conducted by SiriusDecisions and Chief Marketer. More than 200 marketers from a range of organizations were polled to show how marketers are investing in marketing operations and what benefits and challenges they're seeing along the way.
The complete results of this survey were presented in our free webinar "Technology and the B-to-B Marketer: 5 Actions to Take Now for Better ROI Later."
Mind the Skills Gap
Marketers told us loud and clear that new technology investment requires new skills, but they're not investing as much as they need to to make these skills available on their teams. Less than 20% of companies said they had the skills they need to support technology deployment.
Despite this recognized gap, our survey revealed numbers indicating a lack of focus on this need. More than 70% of companies said they had no budget for training, and 65% said the same or fewer people would be left to manage technology investments. When we asked marketers to describe their biggest challenges, lack of skills to support their technology investments was high on the list.
Support the Marketing Operations Team
It's clear that one team within marketing is taking a lot of responsibility for tech success. When we asked who within marketing is in charge of various aspects of managing that technology, respondents said that marketing operations:
• Manages vendor selection in 71% of companies
• Manages technology implementation in 66% of companies
• Is responsible for ongoing management of technology in 72% of companies
• Creates the marketing tech roadmap in 76% of companies
Marketing operations, usually the hub for all things reporting, process and data, is now also in charge of the technology that enables all these areas—and the process development needed to make it all work. Marketing operations acts as a shared service to put the technology in place, and then helps users from other marketing functions take advantage of the new tools.
This model is similar to the way sales operations supports CRM and other tools for broader sales productivity and reporting. Unfortunately, as marketing operations takes on more responsibility, its resources in the form of people and budget don't always keep pace, and some organizations don't even have an operations function in place yet.
Megan Heuer is service director, marketing operations strategies, SiriusDecisions Inc.
For more on this survey, listen to our free archived webinar "Technology and the B-to-B Marketer: 5 Actions to Take Now for Better ROI Later."
