I’m a problem solver. While I’m currently a solutions architect at BDO Digital today, I was once a marketing and sales operations manager. It was my job to help my organization get to the root of what’s not working in their marketing operations and set us on a clearer track to hitting our marketing goals.
When a process is broken, the cracks will show themselves in several ways. The bulk of the problem might be with slow manual processes, an outdated marketing automation tool or a combination of both. Wherever the problem arises, the issue is rarely as simple as it seems on the surface.
When I’m called in to solve a problem, it’s typically because at least one of these three things has happened:
- Marketing and Sales users complain that their system is too messy to find what they need.
- Managers and executives can’t get the reports they need to make data-driven decisions.
- A new team member with a fresh perspective arrives and notices that something isn’t right.
Auditing marketing systems can be an extremely arduous task. True transformation comes from diving deep into the history, people, practices and tools that make up an organization’s marketing operations. As you can imagine, that’s a lot of data to gather and make sense of, which is why I’ve documented this step-by-step sequence to make the experience easier for everyone.
Step One: Identify Your Collaborators
At this early stage, it’s key to get a big picture of your organization’s overall marketing systems. For most audits, enlist two or three people as your main collaborators.
Having a variety of perspectives to draw knowledge from will give you the most comprehensive view of how their processes currently run. Often, you’ll find that the marketing team leaders were part of defining the process requirements and may, therefore, have keen insight into the history of how practices developed, which will be useful in a later step.
Step Two: Find Out Where It Hurts and Why
Next, it’s time to review the tools, systems and integrations involved in the overall process. For this step, good listening skills are essential. Sometimes I joke that this part of the process feels like being a marketing operations therapist, which isn’t far from the truth.
Find out where your teammates are experiencing the most pain in their day-to-day workflow. Maybe the marketing team is struggling to know where it’s sourcing its best leads. Sometimes analysts don’t have the data they need to report on opportunity numbers, or the sales team isn’t getting the right leads for its territory. Whatever their frustrations are, listen intently and with a nonjudgmental ear. At this point, your job isn’t only to find out what’s wrong but also to build trust. If you can establish a good relationship early in the process, you’ll be in a much better position later to inspire impactful change.
Ask questions that help uncover where their pain originates. For example, suppose a common complaint is that sales representatives and account executives aren’t following up with potential customers. In this instance, you would need to ask deeper questions about how and where their lead information is coming from. You may find that the information exists but your systems may not be syncing the data correctly or quickly enough to follow through when it would really count.
Step Three: Uncover the “Why”
To discover why a process exists as it does, you must find out what roadblocks or limitations existed when it was created. A relatively young business doesn’t always have the resources needed to build a seamless process from the get-go. Sometimes business leaders must get innovative to bridge the gaps in their resources, resulting in creative problem-solving. As businesses grow, however, sometimes those creative solutions become part of the problem.
In this step, seek out anyone in the organization who was involved in the history of building their current process. Are the old roadblocks still there? Are there new features that can replace old solutions? Continue building trust in this phase. At any step in this process, always look for opportunities to present yourself as a source of help, not criticism. This helps your collaborators be more honest when describing their decisions and actions, which makes it easier for you to get to the source of their problems.
Step Four: Get to the Heart of the Data
Here’s the harsh truth: Some organizations are data hoarders, and many others have missing or incorrect data. They often collect data they don’t need, don’t archive what they’re not using or don’t clean up data issues when they are found. The result is a messy system that doesn’t let them find the information they do need.
In this step, you dive into the mess to find what I call “the heart of the data.” This is the information that’s most important for the organization to function. What is their data structure? How about picklists? How are they segmenting and organizing their data? This is where you help them identify the key data sets that each team needs to function so everyone knows what information is most important to their tasks and where it’s kept.
Step Five: Map a Visual Process Flow
Next, you’ll want to review all documentation about the affected process flow to get an idea of the sequence of actions created. How do you move leads from demand generation to lead capture to becoming an opportunity? How are prospects being passed from one team to the next?
Depending on the organization, some of these processes can be incredibly complex. Instead of writing it out in huge, overwhelming blocks of text, it’s best to create a visual roadmap that clearly lays out how their process is running. If they don’t have a visual roadmap, help them create one as you go through the discovery of their process together. Breaking everything down into a visual blueprint helps let everyone see how things are really operating.
Step Six: Propose Your Ideas for Enhancement
Lastly, you must come forward with your proposed ideas for fixing the problems you’ve identified. Sometimes there’s a single clear way of fixing a problem. Other times, however, there will be multiple paths with a range of advantages, which makes your task of proposing one a bit trickier.
Any ideas you present should be supported confidently and thoughtfully. Use all the information you’ve captured about their process (including the visual workflows) and weigh the pros and cons of available options. No matter how confident you are with your proposal, be ready to encounter some resistance. Come prepared to support your proposed changes, but keep the discussion open for deliberation. This is often where information that didn’t come out in the earlier stages is shaken out, which can be useful when establishing the final, updated process.
BDO Digital is here to help
At BDO Digital we have a team of experienced experts to guide you in prioritizing and addressing critical gaps in your data, and marketing operations processes. Stretched for resources? Learn how our team can help.
Sonnia Hove is a Solutions Architect at BDO Digital Adobe Marketo Engage. Her experience in marketing technology and operations has helped many organizations implement scalable marketing and sales processes. She has a passion for documentation, stack design and elegant solutions that allow growing businesses to hit their goals and continue building on their dreams.
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