2025 Marketing System of Record: After 2 decades of misfires, it is time to close the loop for marketing decision-makers.
By Eric Rotkow, Managing Partner, The Wolf Tank
Look to the Past for Lessons Learned
First-generation marketing workflow solutions (so-called Marketing Resource Management or MRM) were less than successful. The systems could not meet intimate collaboration needs of marketing planners nor practitioners.
More recent generations have paved a better path for Marketing and Tech leaders, who now have access to platforms to truly manage “the work.” Marketing organizations large and small that have deployed applications such as Monday.com, Workfront, Asana, Jira, and others have persevered through trying process transformation and change management. While many still seek stability in their operations, these types of tools are now ubiquitous, with real value realized.
The emphasis on personalization and the content supply chain has left planning capabilities behind. At the same time, these tools are almost exclusively oriented to execution, activation, and publishing. Inside of marketing especially, technology vendors have not invested in the capabilities that square with how leaders at complex organizations come together to plan strategies and tactics, and budget across a litany of dimensions. Several vendors claim this capability, but few can deliver on the promise to truly support marketing planning.
The elephant in the room
It is one thing to programmatically formalize ways-of-working and standardize processes for the creation and distribution of content. It is another to structure methodology by which leaders—from across the country and around the world—drive innovation through planning cycles and turn programs into multi-layer work efforts with appendages of regions, business units, regulations, service providers, and so on.
Outside of executive off-sites, beautifully crafted presentations, and complicated spreadsheets from finance, little advancement has been made to connect this planning to execution. And, without closing the planning-to-execution loop, marketing will never be able to run its function as a business. Closing this loop allows us to solve for a range of imperatives. See the figure below for Uptempo’s view on how to evolve by closing the loop in operational technologies.
Where to start: chicken or egg?
When it comes to deploying technology, what comes first, planning or execution? With the proliferation of Work Management over the last ~10 years the overall operational maturity has reached the threshold of sustainability. We believe that Work Management has paved the way for meaningful planning solutions to now penetrate CMO planning cycles. There will be work to do to align taxonomy and the “units” of planning, but this work pales in comparison to the change management already activated by deploying Work Management to many who perform marketing execution.
Untangling the available technology and connecting planning to execution is not without its challenges. Lessons learned from others include:
Marketing planning is inherently different and the tools you select need to consider marketing’s unique requirements. Tools like Anaplan and Planful are fine, but do not have the capabilities or data models to support marketing.
To fully close the loop, your planning solution should purposely co-exist with many planning tools (along with enterprise financial applications). Any enterprise of any size will perform work that is inherently different, and will likely have the best-fit work management solution to meet the needs of the various types of work.
Aligning planning cycles and financial cycles is key. Ensuring marketing plans are structured to connect with budget timelines improves visibility, resource allocation, and measurement of ROI across the board.
A viable marketing System of Record (SOR) is not just about deploying technology—it's about aligning people, processes, and tools to create seamless connections between planning and execution. By leveraging learnings from past missteps as well as modern solutions designed for marketing’s unique complexities, enterprise leaders can close loops —and operate with precision, agility, and impact.
With the right planning solutions in place, working in concert, marketing organizations unlock efficiencies, improve resource allocation, and drive better business outcomes.
Now’s the time to bridge the gaps: When planning and execution work in harmony, marketing teams are empowered to achieve their potential, and enable their organization to better compete.