Oh….I wish I could tell you straight up what's the right organizational structure for where an enterprise MarTech operation should sit.

In my experience, for every ten enterprises that Real Story Group works with, it seems we see at least eight different models for organizing how marketing technology functions and where it sits organizationally.

Clearly, many companies are structuring MarTech based on their own historical particularities.  Sometimes new C-level executives will seek to organize the MarTech function based on what they’ve seen work well at previous firms. 

Sometimes an enterprising leader will simply pop up and persuade the CMO to create a MarTech team. Sometimes it falls to IT because no one else will take it on. To complicate matters further, MarTech is not immune to the seemingly regular cycle of corporate re-organizations.

Precepts and Opinions

I’ve come to the conclusion there are more good ways to organize MarTech than bad.  And at RSG we know there are some basic precepts that should apply:

• MarTech should be a business (i.e., Marketing) function that incorporates ample IT and Data services either as dotted lines or direct reports, or some combination
• A product management approach is critical to satisfying rapidly evolving business needs in a stack context
• Cross-functional tiger / activation teams are useful for selecting, implementing, and enhancing platforms

Beyond that, I have opinions:

• MarTech should also encompass Digital (a.k.a., inbound) and AdTech, even at the risk of changing the name. The most customer-focused enterprises I know do this; alas most still keep these teams as separate silos
• MarTech should serve as a center of excellence on the platforms that the team selects and oversees
• This may or may not mean that the MarTech team serves in a central marketing ops role for actually employing the solutions; however, as platforms get more complex and foundational, an enterprise should find itself needing fewer tactical and channel digital marketers, and more of a centralized function for omnichannel engagement
• AI is not going to fundamentally change any of this, even as it enables more productivity and faster, more effective engagement efforts, along with some new roles
• There are meta-models for organizing MarTech in an enterprise that can serve as target references as enterprises rethink and modernize this critical function.  More about that below.

What If You Could Start from Scratch?

What if you could create the ideal corporate org chart around MarTech?  What would it encompass?  How would reporting and resourcing work?  What roles would it host?

At a recent RSG MarTech Leadership Council meeting we asked two-dozen participants those exact questions, splitting them into four groups to see what they’d create. It was a fascinating workshop!

When enterprise MarTech leaders can brainstorm from scratch. Source: RSG

The fact they came up with four very different aspirational models suggests that corporate profile, footprint, and business models play a significant role in organizational design. And also, that smart, experienced MarTech leaders can have strong differences of opinion on this topic.

Some Models Out of the Mist

Out of that effort and other surveys, RSG has developed some prototypical reference models for a MarTech organization, based on key discriminators. We had the opportunity to share these with our Council earlier this week along with some participant show-and-tell.

We'll be sharing a high-level write-up of that event shortly.  Meantime, if you'd like to join the Council on behalf of your firm, simply apply here.