Moni Oloyede's "How to Identify Your Operational Approach”

Moni Oloyede delivers another knock-out sesh at #MarTechFest Dial Up Series 2.

Marketing Operations professionals (or MOPs) are the ultimate utility player, with a multitude of digital marketing and technology skills under their belt. Moni Oloyede joins for with another knock-out #MarTechFest Dial Up session on how to identify your operational approach, as a Marketing Operations Manager.

Moni talks us through why Marketing Operations professionals struggle to get a seat at the table or have their thoughts heard by leadership, and how to change this by discussing to adopt a philosophical approach to operations management and how you can better apply your skills to move towards leadership positions yourself.

The role of Marketing Operations, as Moni puts it, “can feel like a jack of all trades, one of a swiss army knife.” Almost every marketing function requires the input of Marketing Operations in order to execute. From website input, content management, campaign building, social media, data analytics to CMS management.

The core competences of Marketing Operations, is how you manage:

How to manage users of the system and how to manage key stake holders of the business. How involved are they in the day to day operation?

Workflows, project management, process efficiency, and governance

Management of the system, integrations and stack management

Data integrity, privacy and compliance, analytics and reporting

They’re required to be highly skilled, yet barley visible. To all our MOPs out there, when was the last time you were invited to all the meetings and discussions for the above functions? Moni tells us that if you want a seat at the table, you need to start communicating your value better, and to become a better communicator, you need to become a better learner.

Moni breaks down 3 philosophical approaches that will help you identify your own operational approach to ensure the M-O-Ps become rightfully recognised as the M-V-Ps.

Approach 1: Robustness

This approach can be used for any sized business and works best for people who like to move quick and be agile.

Goal: A system that will perform optimally under consistently varied conditions.

It’s all about open access and all hands on-deck.

The process is established but not very well documented. This serves the ability to adjust as you go, they key being to withstand changing conditions.

It has the ability to move fast and be very agile, however, it’s prone to make mistakes and errors because of the lack of time and structure committed to the process.

Not very well structured and organised at global level as data is managed on a campaign level. The speed of execution taking priority.

The positives of the Robust Approach are that it allows you to be extremely agile and move quickly. However, it’s important to recognise that this approach is susceptible to errors, failures and mistakes if the systems and processes aren’t being analysed and evaluated often enough.

Approach 2: Reliability

This is a pro-active approach, which is well planned well designed to make projects as fail safe as possible before launch.

Goal: A dependable system that will perform optimally under most conditions.

Controlled access is key, only essential users get essential access.

Well established, very well documented, and strictly enforced.

Moves very efficiently but very slow. Often a lot of automation is used to scale the management of the system.

System data is relatively healthy, but potentially over automated.

The positives? This approach executes very well and is reliable, however, is still susceptible to forces outside of your control. It also takes a lot of management and is slow to execute.

Approach 3: Resilience

This approach accepts that things happen out of your control and focuses more on what you can control and make it as strong and efficient as possible.

Goal: A dependable system that will perform optimally under any condition

Open access, but only to those with the required knowledge.

Guidelines and templates are established and enforced, but still allows for flexibility for users within the system.

A healthy and efficient system that moves well and won’t execute anything that will slow it down.

System data is very healthy and has a routine process to manage.

The Resilience Approach executes well and efficient enough, that it can withstand almost anything and will get the job done. However, be prepared that this approach requires constant monitoring and a lot of management.

The right approach will depend on how you and your team work, there’s no one size fits all. If you have an operational philosophy, you’ll be able to learn the system better and faster allowing you to have impactful conversations around the marketing approach and not just the tech.

“Philosophy is the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience. The search of wisdom or knowledge.” And as well all know, with knowledge, comes power.

Feast your brain on Moni’s full session along with loads more from our inspiring line-up of speakers. Grab your pass to #MarTechFest Dial Up Series 2 here.