Marketing Ops Solutions for Financial Services Companies: Data Management and Analysis

Finance companies, by the very nature of their business, generate and use large amounts of data. And that data, which is critical to every facet of their operations, must be both comprehensive and reliable. If it’s not, the organization will soon find itself at a severe competitive disadvantage. That’s why more and more businesses in the finance sector are turning to Marketing Ops (Marketing Operations)  solutions to help them implement a robust data management framework that enables them to extract maximum value from their data resources.

With Marketing Ops a company can build and manage a shared repository of information across its entire operation. In particular, the marketing, sales, and customer success functions benefit greatly by having a common pool of trustworthy information that allows them to seamlessly cooperate in ways that maximize the sales potential of the business. In that context, Gartner’s prediction that by 2025 75% of the highest-growth companies worldwide will employ a Marketing Ops model is not surprising.

What is Marketing Ops?

According to Gartner:

“Marketing operations is the function of overseeing an organization’s marketing program, campaign planning and annual strategic planning activities. Other responsibilities include technology and performance measurement and reporting and data analytics.”

Marketing Ops aims at optimizing a company’s overall marketing process by streamlining marketing workflows, implementing and managing appropriate technologies and tools, and ensuring that all functional areas in the organization have the marketing-related information they need to successfully perform their roles.

A good Marketing Ops solution will collect and integrate data from across the organization to establish a single source of truth that provides a common, comprehensive view of the customer journey. This, in turn, enables data-driven decision-making that optimizes the organization’s sales and marketing efforts.

Importance of Marketing Ops for Data Management and Analysis

One of the primary benefits of Marketing Ops in finance companies is its ability to integrate and consolidate data from multiple functional areas. In most companies, the sales, marketing, and customer success functions have traditionally operated independently, each having its own unique goals, processes, and data. The result has often been misalignments, misunderstandings, and inefficiencies that hinder the company’s marketplace efforts.

A fundamental goal of Marketing Ops is to break down such organizational silos to foster collaboration and data sharing between functions. To that end, the Marketing Ops team focuses on ensuring that other functions within the company, such as sales, finance, customer success, and product development, have the marketing data they need, and that the marketing organization, in turn, receives the information it needs from the other functional areas.

For example, a good Marketing Ops solution will integrate smoothly with forecasting, analysis, marketing automation, sales enablement, sales engagement, CRM, and other tools throughout the company, ensuring that all instances of these systems work from the same unified base of information.

This consolidation allows users in any area to have a more comprehensive understanding of the entire sales and marketing process rather than being restricted to a myopic view of only their particular part of it. For example, when members of the sales team have access to marketing data, such as campaign engagement metrics and customer preference information, it can give them a big-picture perspective that helps them better tailor their sales approach.

The boost Marketing Ops provides for a finance company’s data management and analysis capabilities helps the business streamline its go-to-market strategy, make better marketing decisions, get all functional areas working more smoothly together, improve its competitive position, and, ultimately, increase revenues.

Key Elements of Marketing Ops for Finance Companies

A recent Forbes article declared that today “every company is a data and analytics company.” That maxim applies with particular force to businesses in the finance sector. They face data management challenges that, if not adequately addressed, can severely hinder their ability to effectively manage risks, prevent fraud, understand the characteristics and needs of customers, measure sales performance, meet regulatory and compliance requirements, and, in general, make good business decisions.

But now more and more finance companies are recognizing that Marketing Ops gives them the tools they need to overcome these challenges. Let’s take a look at some of the specific data management issues Marketing Ops helps companies address:

• Data Consolidation and Integration: Finance companies typically handle large amounts of data from many different sources, ranging from a variety of internal functional areas (often siloed and sometimes inconsistent) to external data providers such as credit bureaus, market intelligence companies, and customers. A good Marketing Ops solution collects data from disparate sources and seamlessly consolidates it into a single, authoritative repository of consistent, accurate, and reliable information to support decision-makers across the organization.
• Data Quality: Because their data may come from a variety of sources, some of which they don’t directly control, finance companies must implement rigorous data validation, cleansing, and verification processes to ensure the quality of the data. Otherwise, inconsistencies and errors in the raw data will almost certainly cause confusion and, at times, operational disruptions. A modern Marketing Ops solution will have automated data quality and cleansing tools that can identify and help resolve inaccuracies, duplications, and inconsistencies in the data.
• Analytics/Reporting: Marketing Ops solutions offer advanced analytics and reporting capabilities that can be tailored to the specific needs of finance companies. For example, they provide tools to track key metrics, visualize financial data, generate comprehensive reports, and perform in-depth analyses in areas such as sales, revenue, regulatory compliance, and competitive landscape.
• Forecasting: A good Marketing Ops solution will leverage historical data, market trends, and predictive analytics models to generate accurate forecasts not only of overall revenues but also of revenues for specific products, geographical areas, etc. It will also enable you to run “what-if” scenarios to test the potential of different marketing or sales strategies.
• Automation: A modern Marketing Ops platform will provide extensive workflow and process automation capabilities that can substantially improve productivity in areas such as data entry, creation of reports and customer outreach communications, and, as we have seen, data cleansing. Plus it eliminates the necessity of manually taking data from one system and entering it into another, which not only directly increases productivity but also substantially reduces errors.
• Collaboration/Syncing Across Finance Teams: As we’ve seen, ensuring a smooth flow of marketing information between functional areas is a core function of Marketing Ops. It provides tools for real-time data syncing across the organization, implementing shared workflows, tracking tasks across teams, and producing consolidated analytics and reports. And most importantly, by consolidating all marketing-related data into a single, shared repository, Marketing Ops creates a centralized, insight-rich knowledge base that helps keep the marketing team well-informed and on the same page.
• Regulatory Compliance: The data finance companies handle often includes highly sensitive customer information that must, by law, be well protected from unauthorized access. In addition, the regulatory environment in which finance companies operate includes specific and detailed reporting requirements that necessitate the retention of large amounts of historical data. Marketing Ops supplies the sophisticated data management, retrieval, and reporting tools that are necessary for meeting compliance standards. For example, because companies can face hefty fines as well as severe reputational damage for marketing to customers who have unsubscribed from their communications, Marketing Ops implements robust systems and processes to accurately track and manage customers’ subscription instructions and ensure that unsubscribe requests are honored.
• Data Governance: Finance companies must ensure the quality, consistency, reliability, and appropriate availability of their data. Marketing Ops facilitates effective data governance by providing robust data quality, consolidation, retention, management, metadata, and auditing tools that can be uniformly applied across the organization throughout the data life cycle.

Related: Digital Marketing Gaps in the Financial Industry Leave Opportunity on the Table

Going Deeper with the Right Marketing Ops Partner

The data management and analysis capabilities of an advanced Marketing Ops solution can provide finance companies with substantial benefits, such as helping them streamline their operations and improve their competitive position. But because it requires aligning people, processes, and technologies across the organization, implementing Marketing Ops can be a complex undertaking. That’s why working with a partner organization that has deep experience and expertise with both Marketing Ops and the financial sector can make all the difference.

Vertify not only has the experience and expertise to provide reliable guidance for companies embarking on their Marketing Ops journey, but we also offer an advanced Marketing Ops  Automation platform and human intelligence that can be specifically configured to meet your company’s needs and help you move ahead of your competition.

If you’d like to explore how a state-of-the-art Marketing Ops solution can boost your company’s data management and analysis capabilities while busting your data silos and helping position you for accelerated growth, Vertify can help. Contact us to request a demo today.