Marketers are not technology specialists – nor should they be. Leave that to marketing operations. Marketing operations is there to get the right products, configure them, integrate them, but also understand how those products get used in marketing programs and campaigns. When all this is left to marketers, that's when the problems start.
Terminus's Murlowski explains: "A marketing practitioner might think, ‘I need this tool and it fits in my marketing budget so I’m just gonna go buy it.’ And then they’d find out three months down the road that sales had a tool that did virtually the same thing." You must work closely with marketing operations and revenue operations to prevent this and determine whether your organization has the resources to implement any new tools. "Often, you’ll be paying for that shiny new tool for months before marketing ops can even put it in their roadmap and activate it for you properly."
The earlier you involve marketing ops, the better. It’s not unheard of to be at the point of signing contracts before ops is involved, at which point they may list the tools already in place that do the same thing. "If you don’t bring ops and the sales team in when you’re starting to think about new marketing tech, you’ll slow your own processes down."
