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Designing and Implementing an End-to-End Marketing Operations Process

In 2019, I worked with a regional-sized retailer as they were going through an organizational transformation initiative to scale their operational capabilities. Prior to my arrival, the company had implemented a process called “Fully Integrated Planning” (FIP), which was meant to align the timelines of all business units for the rollout of each in-store seasonal floor set. I was the Marketing liaison for the organizational “tiger team”.

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Change Management

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Process Improvement

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Project Management

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Relationship Management

The Problem

There was a lack of consistent and comprehensive stakeholder communication across the organization about how Marketing was budgeting and supporting seasonal merchandising initiatives. This created downstream impacts for store planning and schematics teams and new store openings, both reliant on in-store marketing deliverables and installations.

The Solution

I formalized and standardized an end-to-end marketing operations process that included the development of a marketing strategy brief as a communication tool for sharing and tracking marketing support of organizational initiatives that supported seasonal merchandising strategies.

Actions Taken:

  • I cross-functionally collaborated with FIP partners to standardize meeting cadences, define meeting objectives and deliverables, and map inter-team dependencies.
  • I designed and implemented a Merchandise Strategy Brief and a Marketing Strategy Brief to foster communication and maintain a living record of strategic direction provided to both stakeholders and execution teams.
  • I designed and implemented a standardized integrated marketing campaign planning and execution process. This included planning, concept, photography, production, and product delivery phases. Campaigns were organized into a weekly production schedule according to their live in-market date. Sub-processes included:
    • A Marketing Leadership Team strategy session
    • A weekly project kickoff meeting
    • A creative concepting and mockup delivery for photography direction process
    • A merchant/marketing layout review
    • A (team) creative review (for group critique)
    • A proof submission deadline and process
  • I implemented 1:1 weekly touch base meetings with all of my Marketing Leadership teammates AND held a weekly leaderless Marketing Leadership Team meeting to model my commitment to teamwork and communication across all of our job functions, initiatives, and priorities.

    Results Delivered:

    • Ensured on-time delivery of Marketing deliverables for each seasonal project.
    • Improved inter-departmental communication of strategy, business needs, deliverable statuses, goals and expectations.
    • Integrated channel planning within marketing for campaign cohesion and execution efficiency.
    • Fostered a collaborative, knowledge-sharing environment amongst all team members at all organizational levels.