How to Manage a Successful Martech Implementation

Author: Moira Fish

Refreshing your Martech stack and moving to a new platform can be challenging, but rest assured, there is a clear path forward

Updating your Martech stack and moving onto a new platform can feel daunting, however with the right approach you can get the rewarding outcomes you want and really accelerate your customer experience. On the upside, a new platform will give you modern features, and fresh capabilities that were never possible with your legacy setup.  However, the effort to migrate can feel like a series of hurdles to overcome.

You will need to tackle a long list of challenges, rebuild data flows and processes, migrate critical use cases that have to keep delivering, and factor in designing new use cases to showcase value this investment provides, to those up above. On top of that, you will need to understand how this new platform will change your operating model and day to day responsibilities, not to mention bringing this into a busy team and making sure they embrace the change.

Essentially you need to orchestrate and deliver a complex change management initiative whilst carrying out the day job.

Complicating matters further, you might be dealing with stripping out bespoke solutions and legacy tools, that have had layers of complexity built upon them organically over the years. This can result in a labyrinth of rules driving various customer experiences or powering downstream systems, with little documentation to support and only a handful of individuals or ‘Bob in IT’ having any idea how these processes work, because someone showed them once, years ago.

This might be an exaggeration, but you get the point, and we have worked with clients before who have had important and visible customer facing experiences, driven off layered bespoke process and a maze of logic. Starting as a tactical solution or workaround to fill an immediate gap and business requirement, and before long the beast has grown legs and is critical to driving customer experience 10 years down the line.

These complexities ultimately raise the stakes, when it comes to switching to a new platform. The sales pitch may promise a best‑in‑class experience, and they do move the capabilities on significantly, but in reality, there will be trade‑offs, design decisions, and compromises along the way.

This therefore comes with the knowledge, that if you get it wrong, the impact lands with the end customer. They are waiting for that discount, e-receipt or voucher as value exchange for their loyalty and they don’t want to feel short changed due to technical challenges behind the scenes.

So given this state of play, how do you go about tackling such a project.

You know the end results open up a whole new world but making sure you get this right and bring the team along with you, is no mean feat.

SETTING UP FOR SUCCESS

Fear not, this wasn’t meant to scare you into workarounds or beholden to ‘Bob in ITs’ backlog for ever more, but to recognise that with a few key recommendations you can set yourself up for success.

Here at Shaw/Scott we have run successful migration projects for over a decade and many of us have been part of the Martech industry since its infancy.

We understand that Martech Migration projects aren’t about just turning on a shiny new platform, but about looking at your data and logic, unwinding years of tactical solutions and looking to re-build in a way that improves customer experience and allows the ability to scale.

These recommendations might not be ground-breaking, but in the excitement of getting a new platform, project basics can all too often be forgotten and ultimately, any project needs a robust delivery framework.

Planning and Discovery

Start planning this project earlier than you think you need to. Sometimes you don’t have the liberty of time and must seize the opportunity to migrate and take the hit. However, investing in proper groundwork up front saves a whole lot of pain further down the line, reducing the compromises you have to make.

It allows you to surface core dependencies and unknowns to dig into. Weeding any challenges early so you can de-risk the project in the long run.  

Make time for thorough data discovery, be clear on your ultimate vision to provide direction, and then drill down into your MVP use cases, to define priorities and expose the biggest risks to mitigate against.

Gathering Requirements and Documentation

 

This leads onto the second recommendation. Gather your requirements, document them, and clearly MoScoW-prioritise each, so that they can be reviewed and signed off. At Shaw/Scott, we understand the importance of documentation from requirements, technical design and test plans, and this stage shouldn’t be overlooked, it keeps stakeholders aligned, with a clear view on what success looks like. It also creates a robust framework to balance any new requirements or ‘wouldn’t it be nice’ requests that arise during the delivery against original scope, helping you to manage dreaded scope creep and keep the project on track.

Documentation later in the project helps to create robust QA and testing phases and generally gives reassurances that enhancements can be made later down the line with no knowledge lost.

Project Approach

Does migrating mean simply copying what you have? The ‘lift and shift’ approach can have a place when things just need to get done and done quickly. However, this shouldn’t be the core migration strategy, it offers no opportunity to fix what isn’t working, so you risk porting your problems over to a new system and failing to unlock its true value. Although you will have time pressures with a project, you can still design for success with some key principles. Engage stakeholders to understand how things should work and compare against how they do currently, remove outdated or redundant logic, and automate wherever processes are still manual.

There is always a fear that if the scope isn’t included as part of the launch, then ultimately it won’t ever get delivered as a later phase, however, there needs to be a realistic plan on what can be achieved and required for initial launch versus what can be phased to optimise as part of a roadmap of iterative development.

Build a genuine backlog of enhancements to tackle post-launch, it should still be part of the project, as ‘launch’ doesn’t need to be the end, but just not critical to day one success. This means you focus on the most impactful things first, deliver early value, without overloading the timeline, risking launch delivery dates.

 

Team Mobilisation

A successful migration demands a cross functional team that is empowered to deliver from the start. This should bring together a mixture of decision makers and business users, alongside specialist Martech expertise across data, engineering, QA and CRM. Often these projects bring about the need for colleagues that don’t necessarily work together day in and out, so it is important that the right team is mobilised from the start with a mandate to deliver. We believe having a ‘one team’ ethos from project initiation is essential for maintaining momentum and working towards the common goal and ultimate success. Without this, the project can feel like a side project to many and momentum will be lost and delivery not achieved.

Delivery Progress

Once you get into implementation, you may find yourself dreaming about data and use cases but the foundations you have laid, will help you navigate through any curve balls that come your way.

With a mobilised cross functional team, and time invested in planning and requirements gathering, you will have considered the project from all angles, from training and processes to business-critical data and use cases and will have built a strong roadmap of improvements to keep you busy post launch.

Finally, don’t forget to celebrate progress along the way as a team. Bring stakeholders along on the journey and keep the wider organisation and team informed and excited about the upcoming changes. Make them feel included in the process, which in turn supports the successful adoption of your new Martech. These projects are significant undertakings and you should celebrate what you achieve.

THE SUMMARY

 So, updating your Martech stack can feel like a big challenge, but it doesn’t have to be insurmountable. With the right approach, these projects become an opportunity to unwind years of tactical fixes, rebuild data and logic to simplify, modernise and future proof your customer experience.

Just remember:

1.      Start planning earlier than feels comfortable, with upfront discovery, clear vision and defined realistic MVP use cases, in order to reduce compromises and de‑risk the project

2.     Document and MoSCoW‑prioritise requirements, technical designs and test plans so stakeholders stay aligned on scope, risks and what success looks like

3.     Mobilise the right team from the get-go, travelling the journey together from all angles – data, use cases, training and process and ensuring that you have a ‘one team’ collaborative ethos.

4.    Bring wider stakeholders on the journey with you, celebrate those wins and successes, get the team excited for what this change will unlock.

Do that, and the shiny new platform stops being a distant promise and starts delivering real, visible value for your customers, your teams and your stakeholders.

To learn more about Shaw/Scott and how we can support your business with a migration, reach out to a team member at Shaw/Scott via our simple online contact form. Don't forget to follow Shaw/Scott Europe on LinkedIn.