Asher Mathew

CEO at Partnership Leaders | Helping partnership and business leaders build modern businesses through partnerships

Join Partnership Leaders at www.partnershipleaders.com

Co-Founder & CEO

Joined full time in Feb 2023

Partnership Leaders is a private network built to elevate the role of partner teams in their companies. Partnership Leaders is the only organization designed exclusively to enable the success of 1,500+ of the world’s top partner professionals.

Apply at www.partnershipleaders.com

Another new high for Chief Partner Officer roles.

1187 on Feb 1.
1220 today.

The title is rising fast.

But a title does not create a Chief Partner Officer. Mandate does.

Two things determine whether the role is real or symbolic:

Budget.

You need direct ownership of capital.
Not borrowed dollars.
Not discretionary scraps.
Not marketing leftovers.

If you do not control budget, you do not control outcomes.

Authority.

Authority means the power to prioritize.
The power to decline.
The power to protect focus.

If you cannot say no, you are not leading. You are reacting.

Without budget and authority, the CPO is a coordinator with executive branding.

With them, the CPO becomes a growth operator.

The role rests on four pillars.

Build.
Market.
Sell.
Serve.

If partnerships do not drive all four, they are not embedded in the business model.

Titles are expanding.
Mandate must follow.

Something interesting is happening in deals right now.

In the past week I spoke with four services companies.

Each told me the same thing.

Customers are asking for the partner manager to join deal calls.

Why?

Because the deal no longer involves just one vendor.

There are multiple companies delivering the outcome:
• The platform
• The services partner
• The software (think app) partner
• Sometimes even the data or AI provider

Customers want someone coordinating the ecosystem.

Not just selling the product.

That role is increasingly falling to the partnerships team.

If this trend continues, it changes how we think about partnerships.

Partner managers are no longer behind the scenes.

They are becoming the orchestrators of multi-party deals. (I know James Hodgkinson will love this one). 

I am curious if others are seeing this too.

Are customers asking for partnerships teams to be present in complex deals? Pre-Close? Post-Sale?

Am I the only one thinking when will Anthropic launch Claude for #Partnerships?

anyone else?

Hire a Chief Partner Officer...Demo to Satya!

Way to go Marcel!

A new marketplace player enters the market!

Something interesting is happening.

Events are back.

Our London Summit is already at capacity, and NYC and SF are close behind.

What is different this year is who is showing up.

Catalyst is expanding beyond software to include leaders from services and hardware companies.

The conversations around ecosystems and partnerships are getting bigger.

If you plan to attend one of our Summits or the Catalyst Conference, register soon.

More info: join catalyst dot com

One way I think about Catalyst is this:

It’s the premier conference to recruit, re-engage, and retain partners.

Not just network.
Not just content.
Actual ecosystem building.

This year, we’re leaning into Services companies that unlock the enterprise.

Think SIs, agencies, and management consulting firms.
The partners you need in your mix if you want to tap into the $6.15T global IT spend.

We’ll still have strong content for early and mid career partnership leaders. That foundation matters.

But the next unlock is CPO readiness.

What does it take to move from running motions to owning ecosystem strategy?
From supporting revenue to shaping company direction?

That’s the conversation.

Catalyst is for the companies and leaders preparing to shape the next wave of tech through partnerships.

If you’re serious about building a modern partner ecosystem, this is where you should be.

Grab your ticket, early bird ends tomorrow!

Build. Market. Sell. Serve.

Partnerships summed up in 4 words.

Enterprise growth does not break because you lack features.

It breaks because you are not invited into the room where decisions get made.

And those rooms are crowded.

CIOs do not wake up looking for new vendors.
They listen to the firms already embedded in their transformation.

The SI running the cloud migration.
The consultancy redesigning the operating model.
The agency modernizing digital experience.

If you are not inside that orbit, you are fighting uphill.

That is the real partnership conversation.

Not badges.
Not tiers.
Not “ecosystem” as a buzzword.

Access.

Catalyst this year is centered on the companies that control that access.

Services firms that influence how the $6.15T in global IT spend actually gets deployed.

Because here is the uncomfortable truth:

You can build a great product and still lose
if the people shaping the enterprise narrative are not aligned with you.

We will still invest in rising partner leaders. Craft matters.

But the next unlock is bigger.

How do you move from running partner plays
to understanding enterprise power structures?

How do you stop thinking about partner sourced revenue
and start thinking about who shapes demand before the RFP exists?

That is the conversation.

Catalyst is not about partnerships as a department.

It is about partnerships as leverage.

If you want to play inside the enterprise,
you need to understand who already owns the room.

See you in NYC!

Mike Rizzo

When it comes to Community and Marketing Ops, I'm your huckleberry. Community-Led Founder of MarketingOps.com and MO Pros® - the community for Marketing Operations Professionals

Mike Rizzo is a career marketing operations professional passionate about using a people-first approach to building scalable and efficient solutions to the challenges faced by marketing, business operations, and client success teams. 

With his extensive background in marketing Mike helped build, launch, manage and optimize Mavenlink's first user community and Client Advisory Board programs.

In 2017 he also founded the growing community of MO Pros - a place where thousands of Marketing Operations Professionals connect, collaborate and help elevate the practice of Marketing Ops. He is also the co-host of the podcast called Ops Cast.

As the founder of MarketingOps.com, Mike is taking a community-led approach to building a platform purpose-built to elevate Marketing Operations Professionals.

Founder

The number one community for Marketing Operations Professionals. 

I don’t know about you, but I have always found it really hard to find other Marketing Operations Pros to network with both locally and online.

So in January 2017, I started a Slack channel dedicated to connecting with Marketing Operations Professionals.

Today we're a growing community of wicked smart Marketing Operations Professionals who love learning and collaborating with each other.

You can join us here: https://www.themopros.com/join

Today is International Women's Day.

And today, I'm setting aside everything else to celebrate the woman who makes our house a home, our family a team, and our life something I'm genuinely in awe of every single day.

My wife, Amanda.

Long before we were married, Amanda started to share her cookies with me, our family, and friends. 

And for years, those friends, neighbors, and family told her the same thing over and over: "Amanda, you have to sell these." And for years, she smiled, said thank you, and kept right on baking for the people she loved.

She never needed it to be anything more than that.

Then last year, quietly and without any fanfare, she went and got her Cottage Foods License.

No announcement. No big reveal. Just Amanda, deciding it was time to believe what everyone around her had been saying for years.

This week, she completed her first-ever professional photo shoot, capturing nine of her cookie flavors in all their glory. 

She shared it on Instagram.

She put together a limited offer, a 9-flavor bag, and posted it with that same warmth and realness she brings to everything she does.

Within 24 hours, it sold out completely.

I wish I could say I was surprised. I wasn't. Not even a little.

She named her business Dough Darling, and if you know Amanda, you know exactly why. It started in our kitchen, motivated by friends, family, and neighbors. But most importantly, motivated by our beautiful children, her "darlings". 

These cookies have always been her love language. Now she's sharing all of it with the world.

Here's what I want our kids to understand someday when they're old enough to really take it in. They are growing up watching their mom do something incredibly brave. 

She is building something from scratch, on her own terms, in her own time, with her own two hands.

She is showing them what it looks like to believe in yourself, even when it's unknown territory.

She is showing them that the things you pour your heart into have a way of finding their people.

She is showing them that kindness, put into something real, comes back to you.

I don't think there's a more powerful thing a parent can model for their children than the courage to begin.

Amanda, I am so proud of you. Proud of the baker, the business owner, the neighbor, the friend, the community builder, and most of all the mom that you are. You have always been the heart of this family. Now you're sharing that heart with everyone around you, one cookie at a time.

Happy International Women's Day to my wife, and to every woman out there who is quietly building something beautiful and wondering if it's enough.
It is. You are.

Just in case you're wondering... Yes, Orange County locals can get a taste of what sold out in 24 hours 🍪 (more cookies will be made)

Here's her Instagram: @DoughDarling_OC
Give her a follow and celebrate her with me!

Thank you, Savvy Studios, for helping capture this moment. We love you!

Every GTM Engineer needs a GTM Architect. CEO of MarketingOps.com and founder of the MO Pros® private network - where 4,000+ marketing ops, GTM Ops and revenue ops professionals architect revenue growth.

This photo is from years ago. And honestly, it says everything about why Knak is joining us as a GTM Partner+.

Pierce, Nick, and the entire Knak team have been showing up for the Marketing Ops Community for nearly a decade. 

Not because it was trendy. 

Not because "community-led" was a buzzword (remember that?). 

It is all because they get what we do.

And understanding this role matters more than SaaS brands tend to realize.

After years of building MarketingOps(.com), I've learned something about what makes a great sponsor:

It's not a big brand, a lot of budget, or multi-year contracts
(though, no lie that is always helpful... esp the multi-year contracts)

What makes a great sponsor is showing up when no one's watching.

Knak has done that. Consistently. For years.

They've supported practitioners. They've invested in education. They've built tools that make a difference. 

They’ve earned the right to be here.

And I’m excited for what we’re going to build together.

undefined undefined

Founding Member

Stack Moxie Industry Advisor

Growth Master Certification

MO Pros Ambassador

HubSpot Sales Software Certified

HubSpot Design Certification

HubSpot Certified

Inbound Marketing Certification

Buyer Behavior

GrowthHackers University

International Marketing

Marketing For Entrepreneurs

Marketing Information Technology

Marketing Research Methods

At CSUF I mostly stuck to business and technology. I took courses in entrepreneurship, digital marketing, international business and the standard business economics and statistics. My education taught me that I'm a very analytical personality with a knack for understanding & solving technical problems.

I built out a new website for Orange Logic in 10 days using the HubSpot platform... It was only a start but it was an important step to getting our marketing department and brand off the ground.

Orange Logic Website Launch (10 Days)

As part of the BedrockData article on HubSpot Power Users, I sat down with Zak Pines, to share my story on how we use HubSpot and give my perspective on best practices.

HubSpot Power User Interview

Built out their LinkedIn Corporate page, updated the content regularly, Consultation on how to implement strategic LinkedIn campaigns.

US Claim Solutions - LinkedIn

Announcing our newest client. US Claim Solutions. They came to us under the name “Church and Company” seeking a new direction.

InDygital guided them to their new brand and a new look. Check it out

US Claim Solutions

InDygital Is proud to announce one of it’s newest clients: Backyard Mary!

Our team put together the web design and marketing campaign to help them as their business continues to grow. 

Connect with them on LinkedIn (here: http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=132046186)

Backyard Mary

The first accomplishment was launching the new website in less than 2 weeks. The next accomlishments were achieved in less than 6 months: 

Increased lead generation by 650%
157% Increase in Website Sessions compared to prior year (199% compared to old site)
154% Increase in User visits compared to prior year (191% compared to old site)
188% Increase in Page Views compared to prior year (237% compared to old site)
10% Increase in pages/session compared to prior year

Orange Logic Website

When it comes to Community and Marketing Ops, I'm your huckleberry. Community-led founder and CEO of MarketingOps.com and MO Pros® -- where 20K+ Marketing Operations Professionals engage and learn weekly.

MarTech's marketing operations experts to follow | MarTech

Volunteer for CSUF Business Entrepreneurship Course. We work with 5 students and a small business to help get that business' marketing campaign or product off the ground.

Like speed dating, with only 60 seconds each, I (along with a room full of other judges) hear amazing ideas from students whose ages ranged from Middle School to University. Then, I had the very difficult job of picking just 4 from each age group to proceed to the next round of judging.

Acting as an advocate and ambassador for the MO Pros community of over 1800 Marketing Operations Professionals. 

Knak

Marketing Ops Community

This is the face of let’s see what we can unpack at this AMAZING dinner we’re hosting tonight in SF! 

Also, I just feel really awkward taking a selfie in the middle of anywhere let alone a busy airport terminal 😅 

See you tonight folks! 

And for anyone looking to join the next dinner, check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gkSu8-YN

I’ve spent years working with exec teams on go-to-market.

And here’s the most frustrating thing I’ve learned:

Most companies don’t understand that their GTM stack is actually a product.

Not because leadership is incompetent.

But because responsibility for the GTM stack was never clearly defined.

Ask the C-suite or the board a simple question:

“Who owns your GTM tech stack?”

And you usually get silence.

→ the CTO doesn’t own it
→ the CMO doesn’t own it
→ the CRO doesn’t own it

Each leader owns a piece of the motion.

No one owns the system.

That’s the lie most companies are operating under:

GTM is a collection of tools and teams.

It’s not.

GTM is a product.

A real one.

It has:

→ users (marketing, sales, CS, ops)
→ inputs and outputs (signals, leads, handoffs, revenue)
→ friction and failure points (routing, adoption, trust)
→ a lifecycle (build → scale → optimize → govern)

When that “product” isn’t owned, you see the same symptoms every time:

→ “lead quality is bad” (but no one agrees on definitions)
→ “pipeline is slowing” (but the system hasn’t changed in years)
→ “ops, can you fix scoring?” (but no one asks why it exists)
→ “we need better attribution” (but the stack has no architecture)
→ “nothing is broken... it just doesn’t work” (which is worse)


Here’s the GTM insight that changes the conversation:

Most GTM problems are not tooling problems.

They’re ownership problems.

And when a system has no owner, it defaults to the people who understand how systems behave.

And that’s where Marketing Ops quietly enters the picture.

Because MOps already thinks like a product team.

they ask:
→ What are the use cases?
→ Who are the personas?
→ What’s in the backlog?
→ How do changes ripple through the system?
→ What breaks if we ship this?

MOps doesn’t own an app, they own the connective tissue between your product and your pipeline:

Tooling
⤷ Integrations
 ⤷ Workflows
 ⤷ Execution velocity
 ⤷ Analytics that make the system observable

That’s product architecture.

So if you want alignment and scale, stop treating MOps like a help desk.

Stop asking them to “just fix lead scoring.”

Give them a real mandate:

Run GTM like a product.

That’s product ownership. Just applied to revenue.

Until GTM has an owner with mandate, roadmap, and decision rights,
you don’t have a GTM strategy.

You have a collection of optimizations hoping they add up.

Every time I host one of these dinners, I leave thinking the same thing: THIS is why I love what I do. 
 
The table. The people. The real conversations that only happen when you slow down and actually connect.
 
If you're going to be at Adobe Summit this year, I'd love for you to join me.
 
We’re hosting a private dinner on April 21st for a small group of RevOps and MOps leaders and personally curating who's in the room. That means great people, great food, and the kind of conversation you'll still be thinking about on the flight home.
 
Tuesday, April 21st, 2026 | 5:00 – 7:30 PM PST | Smith & Wollensky, Las Vegas
 
Seats are limited on purpose. If you want in, apply below, and we’ll be in touch.
 
Hope to see you at the table. 🙌

I've experienced this in my career at one or more companies

→ Marketing says performance is up.
→ Sales raise concerns.
→ CS says churn risk is rising.

Same company. Same week. Different stories.

Nothing is technically wrong. Yet something clearly is.

And that is what we call an alignment problem.

Department metrics don’t fail. Alignment does.

Everyone loves to debate metrics.

→ Vanity metrics.
→ North star metrics.
→ {{insert your own in the comments}}

That debate misses the real problem.

Many metrics don’t fail because they’re wrong.

They fail because they’re owned in isolation.

Marketing owns its numbers. Sales owns theirs. CS owns theirs.

Each team optimizes what they’re measured on, and they should.

The friction starts in the gaps.

The moment a metric crosses from one function to another, ownership gets fuzzy.

And fuzzy ownership is where alignment quietly breaks down.

This is the promise and the trap of RevOps.

The promise was never “one dashboard to rule them all.”

It was the ability to see the GTM system end-to-end, the same way finance looks at a business through a P&L.

Not marketing vs sales.
Not leads vs pipeline.

But value creation across the whole motion.

That’s where the hard questions live:

→ Who owns the conversion between stages?
→ What metric matters when success depends on two teams, not one?
→ What happens when marketing optimizes for volume and sales optimizes for efficiency?

This is also where metrics get political fast.

And it gets harder as you move up the org.

The metrics an IC needs to do great work are not the metrics a CRO needs to run the business.

CROs and boards care about the same outcomes, they just look at them from different altitudes. 

Same data. Very different audiences.

Metrics don’t exist to be “right.”

They exist to drive action, for a specific audience, at a specific moment.

There’s no such thing as a universally bad metric.

There is such a thing as the wrong metric for the wrong room.

Great operators know how to:

Zoom out across departments
Zoom up and down the org
And translate metrics without losing their meaning

That’s why dashboards fail when they try to show everything.

And why they fail when they show only one thing.

Ops maturity is literally less about choosing the metric and more about knowing:

Who this metric is for

What decision should it enable

And what changes if it moves

That’s the work.

And that’s why RevOps isn’t reporting.

It’s alignment engineering.

Excited to share that MarketingOps(.com) is a media partner of B2BMX

I’ll be attending alongside our team and connecting with B2B marketing leaders who are deep in the work of scaling smarter, more effective GTM strategies.

And we’re even more excited to share that MarketingOps Pro and Pro+ members get 20% off tickets. 

👀 Keep an eye on your inbox for the code. 

#MarketingOps #B2BMX

When we started OpsCast, our biggest fear was,

Would we even have enough people or topics to keep going?

Fast forward, and here’s what surprised me most:

The demand didn’t come from “experts.”

It came from practitioners who rarely get a microphone.

➡ OpsCast just crossed 65,000 downloads.
➡ We’re approaching 240+ episodes.

And we’re booked months out with people who want to share what they’re learning in real time.

That tells me something important.

The Ops community doesn’t lack insight. It lacks accessible space.

Most professional platforms reward polish.

OpsCast rewards perspective.

You need real experience and the willingness to talk about what worked and what didn’t. 

We won’t ask you about complex frameworks and 50-slide presentations.

That’s why this show works.

It’s not optimized for production value but for participation.

We’ve watched the community evolve:

→ Slack groups grow, then get pruned for engagement
→ New formats emerge, career fairs, in-person meetups, certifications
→ More voices finding confidence by sharing instead of waiting for permission

OpsCast lowered the bar to entry and raised the bar for relevance.

The most underrated thing in Ops is shared understanding.

And the most powerful thing we can do as a community
is keep creating places where people can say:

“Here’s what I tried.”
“Here’s what broke.”
“Here’s what I learned.”

That’s how professions mature.

And that’s how new voices become leaders.

#OPsCast #MarketingOps #OPsleaders

I’ve said this before, and I’ll keep saying it:

Nothing replaces getting this community in the same room.

The conversations are sharper.

The thinking gets clearer.

And the momentum you feel when operators compare notes in real time is hard to recreate anywhere else.

That’s exactly why I’m excited about Demand & Expand 2026.

On May 20, the Marketing Ops Community is hosting the full GTM Ops Track, built for people who are designing, running, and fixing real go-to-market systems not talking about them in theory.

No shiny tactics or surface-level playbooks.

This is going to be about:

The scars that sharpen operators → hard-earned insights from things that broke, stalled, or forced a rethink of how the system should work.

Experiments that changed operating behavior → where data, automation, and judgment combined to unlock growth that didn’t fall apart later

Lessons pulled from shipped work → what actually made it to production, what didn’t, and why execution always reshapes the framework

What GTM systems do at scale → how handoffs, incentives, and tooling behave once volume and complexity increase

And just as important, it’s about the time between sessions:

The hallway conversations, the tradeoffs, the “we tried that and here’s what happened” moments you don’t get on Zoom.

If you’re building for long-term growth and care about how the full funnel actually works this is the room you’ll want to be in.

📍 May 19–20, 2026
📍 San Francisco
👉 Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gJtaAV9n

#Demand&Expand2026 #MarketingOps #Growth #Community

You busy Tuesday night in SF? I’ll be in town hosting a dinner with Nish Patel and it’ll be a fireside chat on aligning Leadership + AI to GTM Ops. We will hear from the room and have a great discussion + actionable takeaways promised. 

I have just a few spots. Would love to get a few more Marketing Leaders and Ops Counterparts in the room for the discussion.

Drop me a DM if you are interested.

AI Explorer→ Advisor → Speaker → Host of Creative Ops & Prompting Humans Podcast → Founder of Tomorrow with Nish

I’ve built more dashboards than I can count, and I still run the business out of a spreadsheet.

Because the spreadsheet is where the real work happens.

That’s where commissions get calculated, and pipeline coverage gets modeled.

That’s where budget vs actuals gets stitched together.

The dashboard is usually just the cleaned-up version you show leadership after you’ve already done the work.

And that’s the problem.

Because the moment your spreadsheet becomes the operating layer...

You get stuck in a cycle:

➡ Data pulls
➡ Manual refreshes
➡ Copy/paste into slides
➡ Screenshots into decks
➡ “Wait, which tab is the latest?”

And rebuilding the same reporting every week, like it’s a new project

Most BI stacks don’t solve this.

They just formalize it.

They make the workflow feel more “enterprise”... while the real logic still lives in someone’s spreadsheet.

That’s why I’ve been paying attention to what Coefficient 🌀  is building right now.

They’re taking a simple idea seriously:

If the spreadsheet is where operators build the business… it should also be where dashboards ship from.

Not exported or recreated or screenshot.

Published.

I’ve already built FOUR dashboards with their new AI capabilities to track analytics for MOps-Apalooza and our community research.

Now I’m in the middle of building another one to track our YoY membership metrics, pulling directly from our finance system.

Same workflow. Same place I already work.

Coefficient’s new Vibe Dashboards (in beta) basically let you:

— Connect live data from your stack into a sheet
— Build the logic in the same place where operators already work
— Publish it as a web dashboard other people can actually use
— and trigger alerts when numbers change

So instead of “my spreadsheet → your dashboard”…
…it becomes one system.

And that matters more than people think.

Because most reporting problems aren’t visualization problems.

→ They’re versioning problems.
→ They’re refresh problems.
→ They’re trust problems.
→ They’re “the model lives in one person’s head” problems.

This is the first time I’ve seen a spreadsheet-first approach that feels like it’s trying to become a real operating layer, not just another reporting tool.

If you want access to the Vibe Dashboards waitlist, here’s the link: 
https://lnkd.in/gq8NQEk5

I’m curious:

What’s the most important spreadsheet model your team still runs the business on today?

#RevOps #Finance #MarketingOps #GTM #Data

From Spreadsheet Model to Live Decision Surface

I usually hear this question, what do high-performing Ops teams do differently?

They don’t magically make work easier.

They are just so good at removing decision friction.

In simple terms:

1. Explicit ownership of system truth
 
High-performing teams assign ownership over:
→ lifecycle definitions
→ data quality thresholds
→ system precedence (which system wins when data conflicts)

This prevents “reconciliation loops,” where teams debate numbers instead of acting.

No owner = every decision becomes a negotiation.

2. Tooling is evaluated as operational surface area

They don’t ask, “What does this tool do?”

They ask, “What operational ambiguity does this remove?”

Every new system adds:

→ more states
→ more handoffs
→ more failure modes

Mature teams aggressively retire tooling that increases surface area without reducing ambiguity.

3. Meaning is stabilized before behavior is automated

Automation is treated as a force multiplier.

If definitions are unstable:
→ automation accelerates inconsistency
→ trust erodes faster
→ manual overrides increase

So they lock:
→ stage definitions
→ ownership rules
→ qualification logic

before scaling automation.

That’s how systems become predictable instead of fragile.

4. Metrics are inputs to decisions, not outputs of reporting

Dashboards are designed backward from decisions:

→ What decision should this metric inform?
→ Who should act when it moves?
→ What change should occur downstream?

If a metric doesn’t map cleanly to a decision, it’s noise.

Metrics are pruned, not accumulated.
What this creates at the system level

Fewer:
interpretive debates
escalations
“let’s circle back” moments

More:
repeatable decisions
trusted signals
system-level learning

The system compresses uncertainty.

And when uncertainty is compressed, velocity emerges naturally.

Great Ops teams don’t move faster because they work harder.

They move faster because they design systems that:

Reduce ambiguity, eliminate negotiation and make the next decision obvious

That’s what maturity looks like.

I'm headed to B2BMX this week with Audrey Harze. Want to meet? Checkout the info below 👇 

If you're in a Modern GTM role interacting with GTM technology, I would love to host a casual meet-and-greet. 

All those in Marketing Ops, RevOps, GTM Ops, Marketing, Demand Gen, ABM, Email Marketing, etc are welcome. 

Drop me a comment and let's get a group together!

Absolute pleasure to have Jon Miller join us on Ops Cast to share more on the importance of the strategic value of Marketing Ops in the evolving and fundamentally changed B2B marketing landscape. Thanks for sharing with the Marketing Ops Community, Jon!

Marketing automation is 20 years old and largely unchanged in the last 10. 

I recently discussed why on the Ops Cast podcast, plus what comes next.

WHY LEGACY AUTOMATION STOPPED INNOVATING
The core architecture of legacy MAPs is still rules-based, lead-centric, email-first, and CRM-dependent. Updates tend to be cosmetic. 

Meanwhile, buying has shifted to committees, anonymous research, and non-linear journeys these systems weren't designed for.

Architectural debt made real change too expensive. You can't add AI on top of if-then logic and CRM sync. Rebuilding the core means risking your install base during a multi-year migration, so nobody does it. Plus, getting acquired killed the incentive to innovate. Why rebuild the core when Adobe etc can bolt on new products and charge more?

Finally, expert dependency became the business model. MAPs got so complex they required certified consultants and specialized MOPs talent to operate. That created lock-in and removed pressure to simplify.

HOW AI RESHAPES CUSTOMER JOURNEYS
The biggest shift is from campaigns to what I call "playlists." Today, a marketer running a webinar asks: "Who will get invited?" In the new model, the question becomes: "Who could get invited?" Campaigns become a library of offers; AI sequences them based on signals, timing, and buying stage. One buyer gets a case study first, then a webinar invite. Another gets those in reverse, or skips some entirely.

This frees MOPs from the air traffic control nightmare of dozens of overlapping campaigns with conflicting audience rules, suppression lists, and timing dependencies — complexity that buries strategic thinking under operational firefighting.

THE FUTURE ROLE OF MARKETING OPS
The work shifts from building workflows to teaching AI how the business operates. What does a "webinar campaign" mean at your company? Which segments matter, and why? What rules should never be broken? That's strategic work, positioning MOPs as the team that makes AI useful, not generic.

But it only works if you bring the organization along. If MOPs adopts orchestration while demand gen still thinks "my campaign, my list," you end up in a silo.

WHY CONTEXT AND GOVERNANCE MATTER MOST
AI without operational context produces generic output. It needs your naming conventions, your segmentation logic, the reasoning behind your Salesforce schema after ten years of customization. That knowledge lives in Slack threads and people's heads. When your best MOPs person leaves, it walks out the door.

Governance matters just as much. What gets automated and what needs human review? What guardrails protect the brand, the buyer, and compliance? 

Context makes AI smart; governance keeps it safe; together they make it trustworthy.

We discussed all this and more in the Ops Cast episode; link in the comments.

What's the biggest obstacle you face in shifting MOPs from campaign execution to AI-powered orchestration?

Ops Cast Podcast - Jon Miller

Have you ever spent weeks building a model you’re genuinely proud of, only to get this response in the exec meeting?

“So... what should we do differently?”

OR

“Is revenue going up or not?”

And suddenly, none of the technical brilliance matters.

You build something elegant, sophisticated, and technically impressive.

And no one cares.

Not because it’s wrong.

And not because it’s bad.

But because it doesn’t change a decision.

This is where Ops teams get stuck between clever and useful.

Clever feels good.

It scratches the part of your brain that likes complexity.

It proves you know what you’re doing.

Whereas, useful is quieter and it shows up in outcomes.

Executives don’t care how you got the answer.

They care what the answer means for the business.

→ Revenue up or down.
→ Retention improving or slipping.
→ Risk increasing or stabilizing.

That doesn’t mean the clever work has no value.

It just means it has a different audience.

Let’s take it like this,

➡ Clever work gets celebrated inside Ops
➡ Useful insights get translated outside Ops

You don’t walk the exec team through a 30-minute explanation of your model.

You give them the 30-second version that answers:

“So what do we do now?”

This is where a lot of Ops credibility is won or lost.

Because if you can’t tie your work back to:

Revenue growth, retention, or profitability

You’re going to struggle to justify why it matters.

That doesn’t mean everything needs a perfect, linear attribution path.

But you should be able to tell a believable story about impact.

And that story always starts in the same place:

How does this company make money?
If you don’t know that yet, then
Talk to finance or your CFO.
Ask how the business works.

You don’t need to become a finance expert.

You need to understand the language.

Because finance is the one function everyone understands.

And data becomes a great equalizer when it’s tied to that reality.

Ops is at its best when it sits in the driver’s seat:

Using data to level-set

Using judgment to guide action

And using models to support decisions, not impress people

Long story short...

Sophistication matters. But usefulness wins.

Every time.

Predictive analytics has always been a “sounds great, too hard to actually use” tool for most MOps teams.

Mostly because translating business questions into model-ready data is hard.

This feels like a meaningful step toward closing that gap. Worth checking out what the Pecan AI  team is up to!

CEO of MarketingOps.com and curator of the MO Pros® private network - where 4,000+ marketing and revenue ops professionals architect revenue growth. Because every GTM engineer needs an architect.

🧠 What if the problem with predictive analytics was never the math?

What if it was the translation?

That's the thinking behind Pecan AI's new Predictive AI Agent.

Instead of asking Marketing Ops to think like data scientists, it does the analytical heavy lifting for you.

You ask a business question. In plain English. Like a normal person.
→ "Which customers are likely to churn?"
→ "Which leads will actually convert?"
→ "What's demand going to look like next month?"

From there, the agent connects to your CRM or warehouse, makes sense of the business meaning in your data, builds and validates a predictive model, and pushes predictions back into the systems where decisions actually get made.

The outcomes teams are seeing so far:
📈 ~15% improvement in ROAS
📉 ~12% reduction in churn
⏱ Models reaching production in about a week

As Zohar Bronfman, Pecan's CEO, puts it: "Every business's data is unique. Generic AI models don't understand that context."

That's really the shift here. Not AI layered on top of dashboards. AI that actually understands your business logic and works with it.

SiliconANGLE covered the launch: https://lnkd.in/gZ9dgdGz

Predictive analytics might finally be crossing from "interesting pilot" to genuine operational advantage.
#marketingops

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