Insights from the Marketing Operations Committee

ANA's latest Quick Study examines agentic AI adoption, ROI expectations, and team impacts, showing cautious optimism as marketers pilot autonomous AI to boost speed, accuracy, and personalization.

During a session held at a November 13, 2025 meeting of the ANA’s Marketing Operations and Transformation Forum, attendees heard how General Motors undertook the process of in-housing many of its marketing capabilities and the strategic priorities that have guided it in this process from Chief of Staff Lisa Halfman.

At the ANA Mastering Portrayal & Performance: Frameworks for Accelerating Growth meeting, Kate Roberts, senior director of strategic accounts and managed solutions at Cella, guided marketers through the process of focusing on activities that directly contribute to business impact using proven channels and partnering cross-functionally with teams for sharp-focus execution.

For large-scale launch campaigns, the marketing operations team at Kia creates bespoke cross-functional teams fit for purpose. Kia explained its approach to organizational design based on campaign needs.

A deep dive into why marketing campaign execution takes longer than expected and how enterprise organizations can optimize their operations through process mapping, resource allocation, and quality assurance strategies.

A detailed case study of how Zurn Water Solutions and Elkay Manufacturing successfully merged their marketing operations teams, processes, and technology stacks to form Zurn Elkay Water Solutions, providing valuable insights for operations leaders managing similar organizational transitions.

Marketing operations leaders from major organizations shared their key achievements from 2024 and strategic priorities for 2025, focusing on campaign management, data integration, technology optimization, and organizational transformation.

In a world where many marketing departments merely reuse last year’s plan, marketing operations teams can bring a fresh perspective. From consistent templates to streamlined communications, data insights and clear governance strategies, marketing operations teams can uplift the entire organization.

Discover shared how it brought its different teams together to update its process map and establish a unilateral understanding of its processes and the root causes of customer complaints.

Grant Thornton shared its journey to transforming its marketing operations from a manual to a more streamlined and automated process by leveraging Wrike’s project management software.

Realtor.com shared how it aligned its brand to deploy its new positioning as a trusted guide for consumers on their real estate journey.

During a May 2024 meeting of ANA’s Marketing Operations and Transformation Forum Committee, Kayla Silverstein shared ideas for harnessing the power of empathy in the change management efforts that are so critical to marketing operations.

Krista Sande-Kerback offered platform-agnostic solutions to tame the AI beast.

EXOS’ Scott Berchman reviewed how his organization completely revamped its internal briefing process to create more efficiency, facilitate more collaboration, and ultimately build a stronger and more consistent brand.

Brooke Bartos of EngageSmart shared critical strategies of marketing analytics that can instantly make an impact on your organization.

Thomas Barntsen of Securian Financial explained how marketing operations teams can combine people, processes, and technology at an organization to get optimized results.

Danielle Balestra, director of marketing technology and operations at Goodwin, shared key questions and other considerations for marketers who are implementing or building out a martech stack.

Liz Merrilees Emlay, global director of marketing planning office at HP, provided an overview of how her brand approached restructuring its marketing governance model, highlighting successes and lessons learned.

Andrea Fryrear, of the consultancy Agile Sherpas, offers marketing organizations a framework to guide their efforts to adopt Agile methodologies.

Marketing operations consultancy Flock Associates offers seven tips for overseeing governance and other topics.