Posts Tagged "Shelly West"
Several of us on the Accelent team attended a great webinar the other day – MOCCA’s “Marketing Automation: Lessons from the Front” presented by Shelley West and Tony Anticole of the Corporate Executive Board. (View recording here). MOCCA is the largest group of Marketing Operations professionals in the country and a great resource for education and thought leadership, if you haven’t yet discovered them. (see more) The Corporate Executive Board offers comprehensive data analysis, research and advisory services that align to executive leadership roles and key recurring decisions. (see more)
Shelly and Tony provided some very interesting insights. For instance, the Marketing Automation vision for many organizations is often better than their execution reality. This really shouldn’t be too surprising since this is how nearly all new technologies emerge in markets – and as my colleague Andy Sayare notes, it is why the Gartner Hype Cycle was created many years ago. This vision/execution mismatch was validated by a recent Corporate Executive Board survey. We learned that approximately 2/3 of the companies surveyed that have invested in MA have not realized their overall vision. As a direct result, many companies currently are or will soon be looking outside of their organization for help with connecting their MA vision to their execution potential.
The survey results validate our own experience in the market. Most of our marketing automation projects could be described as aligning marketing automation strategy and execution with the overall business strategy and goals.
It is also interesting to note that the disconnect between vision and execution is almost never about technology. It is almost always about the people and processes first – technology later. In some ways, it doesn’t make much difference which MA system a company chooses. All of the basics will most likely be available in whatever credible tool is chosen. More important is the need to engage with an experienced team who can guide your organization’s people, processes, and technology in a way that supports your business objectives.