What do you do if your Marketing Operations team needs to work with IT to implement new technology?

Reach out early to develop shared goals, expectations, and timelines. Build a business partner relationship with your IT team and develop an understanding of the IT workflow, which will be necessary to secure buy-in for technology implementations.

Marketing Operations should have a clear understanding of the problem they are trying to solve with the new technology. Define specific goals and desired outcomes. This will help IT understand the marketing perspective and choose the most suitable solution.

Clearly define the objectives and desired outcomes of implementing the new technology. Ensure that both the Marketing Operations team and IT department understand the purpose and expected benefits.

Marketing Ops Teams usually have a very clear understanding and even a prepared list of use cases, that the new technology will help to solve for. The most important thing when working with IT, is to help them to understand those use cases. So first try to understand where the IT team is, what is their workload, perspective and understanding. And then work on crafting a good storytelling to present your why and business benefits. From my experience it is always good to put the project and a business benefits in a wider perspective, so the IT team can see interrelations with other projects and systems.

What ever you do DON’T drop this on them last minute. Bring them into the initial conversation or as soon as possible. The best way to have seamless integration and full access is to have IT support. Have all the information and allow them access. Keep lines of communication open.

Developing rapport with IT stakeholders necessitates that you understand and align (for co-owned projects) with how IT works, which is often more structured and systematic than marketing workflows we are used to. Understand how IT evaluates projects and technologies and bring them in EARLY into the process. They will oftentimes look very closely at security, interoperability and connectiveness to common solutions and will need to allot time to assess these things, given the many projects on their plate. Also, be open and willing to work within the IT project management systems (likely Jira), as this will ensure that you are collaborating.

Identify key stakeholders from both teams who will be involved in the implementation process. This might include project managers, technical experts, decision-makers, and end-users. Set up regular meetings or communication channels where the Marketing Operations team and IT department can discuss requirements, progress, challenges, and updates. This could include regular status meetings, email updates, or project management tools. Work together to define detailed requirements for the new technology implementation. This includes functional requirements, technical specifications, integration needs, security considerations, and any other relevant aspects.

The initial meeting with IT should be carefully planned. The approach to this first meeting would depend on the company culture and formal and informal processess. Does you company work agile or not, is there a formal project/ programme management office? Usually, even in formal structures an informal meeting or meetings would be good to discuss the needs the Marketing Operations team and build understanding of where the IT team is. Appropriate allocation and involvement of the right stakeholders and project/ squad team members is critical. We should also be aware of a meeting/ workshop fatigue and importance of a well planned kick-off, where people get otivated and do not feel, that this is and will be a waste of time.

To ensure a project's success, it's crucial to collaboratively define its scope with all involved teams. This process involves detailing technical requirements, establishing timelines, and identifying necessary resources. Setting clear, realistic expectations about achievable outcomes within the constraints of time, budget, and personnel is vital. Documenting these details helps prevent scope creep, maintaining the project's direction and focus.

High level scope in such projects is usually defined before the kick-off meeting. To involve all stakeholders the kick-off can be used to validate/ critique and potentially enrich the scope. So if yo can designate more time for a kick-off, what has worked for me was discussions in smaller teams on scope, timeframe, roadblocks and many other topics. And then group members presented to a bigger audience to reach a consensus and enrich, modify approach. Often separate scoping workshop work as well. Planned on a diffferent date to allow team members to think, check project, systems interrelations and prepare arguments. Of course scope definition would look totally different if you are working agile...

When integrating tools with each others work closely with IT to ensure the data is mapped and flows as it should. Also ensure you follow rules and regulations and protect your customers data and PII. Data should be stored securely and access especially to confidential and personally identifiable information should be given only to people who really need it.

For successful technology integration, Marketing Operations and IT must collaborate to ensure the new system integrates smoothly with existing platforms. This process might include data migration, configuring APIs, or customizing features to meet marketing's specific needs. While IT typically leads the technical aspects, Marketing Operations should continuously provide input, especially regarding how the technology supports marketing objectives and ensures secure, compliant handling of customer data.

Be sure to assign Marketing Operations stakeholders as project team members with their IT counterparts to participate in the project Agile ceremonies. Commit fully to this engagement and don't just "drop in to check on them." The MOPs stakeholders you assign to the project should operate on a technical level with IT and avoid the temptation to engage at a surface level. Most of us prefer it that way anyways.

Conduct thorough testing of the new technology in collaboration with the IT team to identify and address any issues or bugs. Iterate as needed to refine the implementation and ensure optimal performance.

Help one and the other understand the benefits they each bring to the table and the multiples of advantages in the outcome that they could achieve as a team.

Continuously monitor the performance and usage of the new technology post-implementation. Collect feedback from users and stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and optimization.

After the technology implementation, it's crucial to review the results alongside the IT team to verify that the new system meets the predefined success metrics. This step involves analyzing performance data, discussing the outcomes with both teams, and gathering feedback on the integration process. The review serves not only to identify and troubleshoot any issues but also to recognize achievements and extract lessons from any challenges encountered. Emphasizing continuous improvement, this feedback loop should inform strategies for enhancing future technology integrations and collaborations between Marketing Operations and IT.

Successful marketing tech implementation requires marketing and IT working together. Beforehand, marketing should define goals and research the tech, while collaborating with IT to understand its functionalities and integration needs. During implementation, clear roles, phased approach, testing, training, and change management are key. After launch, gather feedback and keep communication open with IT for ongoing support. This collaborative approach ensures a smooth and successful process.

As I mentioned above, generally approach to working with IT on implementing a new technology would really depend on many factors: 1. are you working/ going to work using waterfall or agile 2. the relations you and your team have with IT team and the level of trust between the two teams 3. urgency of the implementation 4. history of change management in the company and a company culture 4. how busy and overloaded people are 5. level of complexity and integrations with other systems 6. impact on company data architecture etc.. So steps you take and approach that you should apply would vary. The most important however is trust and relations with IT team and a sound list of use cases and impact on an overall data architecture.