Gartner for Marketers© 2019 Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. CM_I_770580Marketing Organizational Survey 2019: Marketers Aspire for Agility and Control but Fight Operational ChallengesMarc BrownSenior Director AnalystChristopher Ross VP AnalystMarketing teams seeking greater agility and responsiveness struggle to access the right capabilities and implement effective operational models. In the quest for modernization and evolution, marketing leaders must establish solid team foundations good communication, coordination and collaboration.Marc Brown Senior Director AnalystChristopher Ross VP AnalystPublished 30 July 2019 ID G00394340Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 2OverviewOpportunities and Challenges Marketing leaders strive for decentralization to meet digital transformation and enterprise growth goals. More than half of our survey respondents expect to deploy a decentralized organizational model by 2022, but only 20% of respondents have that model in place today. Marketings resource mix continues to change. Sixty-three percent of respondents have shifted work in-house, seeking greater control while leveraging external agencies for expertise and scale. Over two-thirds of marketing organizations now have a discrete marketing operations function with responsibility for financial planning, performance measurement and campaign management. Martech, analytics and customer experience (CX) capabilities are ranked as most important by marketing leaders, but they are also the areas with the greatest capability gaps. Three-quarters of marketing teams are using agile techniques to plan and manage their work to enable greater flexibility and responsiveness. But, these techniques vary in scope.What You Need to Do To build an effective marketing organization, marketing leaders should: Use Gartners interactive Marketing Maturity Model to benchmark the current state of their marketing resources and operations function. Share results with your leadership team, and engage in a return-on-effort exercise to chart out the next steps. Design for, cultivate and deploy internal marketing services for greater control and reduced third-party dependence on strategic activities. Evaluate and leverage external agencies, focusing on where they complement your capability gaps and scaling needs. Conduct a thorough capabilities analysis, placing their attention on the design of a well-rounded, agile team focused on accountability.Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 3Survey ObjectiveThis research is based on Gartners 2019 Marketing Organizational Survey. It was conducted online from April 2019 through May 2019 of 351 marketing leaders. The purpose of this survey was to better understand the current capability needs, operational priorities and approaches to organizational design to prepare firms for future growth and success.The respondents included marketing leaders in the U.S. (n = 204, 58%), Canada (n = 25, 7%) and the U.K. (n = 122, 35%) who have involvement in decisions pertaining to setting or influencing marketing strategy and planning, as well as aligning marketing budget/resources. It details: The capabilities that are essential for marketers to effectively drive customer engagement and loyalty, as well as deliver against marketing objectives. The expanding strategic role and scope of marketing operations in planning, coordinating and reporting helping marketing leaders achieve organizational flexibility. How much marketing teams rely on marketing services models (shared services, COE and in-house agency) and the impact to work done internally versus externally. What organizational structures reveal about marketing leaders preferred design and why.Data InsightsCEOs are confronting softening growth and weakening margins by diversifying their businesses. One way to achieve business diversity is the application of digital business to offer new products and revenue-producing channels to market. Confirming this increasing focus, 82% of CEOs this year (versus 62% last year) agreed that they had a management initiative or transformation program underway to make their companies more digital (see “2019 CEO Survey: The Year of Challenged Growth”).Marketing leaders continue to play a leading role in digital business transformation efforts. However, despite the effort and investment so far, digital transformation persists as the top driver of organizational change (see Figure 1).Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 4Figure 1. Digital Transformation Is the Most Cited Driver of Marketing Organizational Redesigns for 2019Main Driver of Marketing Organizational RedesignPercentage of Respondents. Top 5 Responses Shown.Source: Gartner All respondents n = 351 Corporate digital transformation initiativeImprove brand consistency/strengthTeam is misaligned from marketing strategyReduction in marketing budgetTeam is inefficient and slow to react to business need or change16% 13% 10% 9% 9%Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 5More than half of marketing leaders strive for decentralization in an effort to meet digital transformation and enterprise growth goals.Marketers continue to search for the optimal structure for todays digital world one best suited to achieve the transformation mandate. There is still considerable variation in their vision for the ideal organization structure. Even with a significant shift away from centralized structures, nearly half of the survey respondents say they will still have some form of centralized structure by 2022 for greater control and consistency via proximity. However, 51% are planning on some sort of decentralized structure by 2022 offering the potential benefits of being closer to the commercial imperative and the ability to work in a nimble way (see Figure 2).Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 6Figure 2. Marketing Organizational Structures and Business Alignment for 2019Marketing Org Structure Today vs. 2022Percentage of RespondentsSource: Gartner All respondents n = 351Today By the end of 202236%24%25%45%16%4%20%51%31 pp38%13%Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 7Interestingly, despite the significant change in desired structure, respondents expect minimal changes in organizational alignment. Thirty-nine percent of marketing organizations are aligned around function or product/brand. The remaining organizations are relatively balanced in their distribution across vertical/industry, geo-centric, channel and focus (e.g., customer experience). There is no clear winner or dominant organizational alignment model. When asked to look ahead and define what would be considered an ideal structure in 2022, there was only a minor reduction in channel structures and a corresponding increase in geo-centric alignment (see “Marketing Organizational Structure: What Should Marketing Leaders Centralize or Decentralize?”).Recommended actions Ensure that your strategy connects business goals to action, focusing on potential organizational changes needed in support of digital business initiatives (see “Use Gartners Marketing Strategy Framework to Build Accountable, Actionable Strategic Plans”). Focus organizational design energy on optimized function/group alignment, leveraging the benefits of a hybrid team model (see “Organizational Design: How to Plan, Implement and Roll Out While Minimizing Risk”). When marketing strategy changes, structures, roles and functions should be realigned around the new objectives. This doesnt always happen, resulting in overlooked responsibilities, inappropriate staffing, and people and functions working against each other. Prioritize and optimize your team workflows. How your team works internally and externally is essential to ensure people are working in harmony. Evaluate instituting a marketing operations team and moving to agile styles of working to meet those requirements (see “How to Get Started With Agile Marketing”).To keep pace with change, nearly 70% of marketing leaders say they rely heavily on agencies today to develop strategy and execute marketing programs despite a preference to build more skills and capabilities in-house.By 2022, marketing leaders aspire to reduce third-party agency dependence for marketing strategy and execution work (see Figure 3). Marketers cited that their ideal operating model would shift more marketing strategy (e.g., brand strategy) work internally while increasing work with external marketing services for filling short-term resourcing gaps and scaling needso-thirds of respondents have shifted work in-house seeking greater control while leveraging external agencies for expertise and scale.Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 80Figure 3. Current Marketing Internal Versus External Operating Model for 2019Current Operating Model vs. IdealPercentage of RespondentsSource: Gartner All respondents n = 342Current operating modelIdeal operating modelAgencies are never engagedAgencies arerarely engagedMarketing team uses agencies and third parties to fill the gaps10203040External marketing servicesInternal marketing servicesMarketing team sets marketing strategy but depends on agencies for executionMarketing team uses agencies for most activity, including strategy and executionMarketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 9agencies, a common benefit of both models. However, they cited internal models best for ensuring brand consistency, strengthening the relationship with media owners, and improving adaptability and convenience. In contrast, they felt external agencies provided greater breadth and depth of skills, delivered higher-quality work, and could fill short-term resourcing gaps more effectively (see Figure 4).Over the past 12 months, 63% of respondents have shifted some work from external agencies and partners to internal marketing services groups for greater control and to lessen third-party dependence.Almost 60% of marketing leaders are relying on only one internal marketing services model shared services, center of excellence (COE) or in-house agency. For teams using only one service, COEs were the top model (36%), followed by the in-house agency (33%) and shared services (31%). Respondents cited operational efficiency as the top reason for using internal marketing services and external Marketing Organizational Survey 2019Gartner for Marketers GMLgartner GartnerDigital gartner/marketing 10