With Robbie Whetzel, Marketing Operations and Technology Manager at Splunk
Robbie Whetzel, Marketing Operations and Technology Manager at Splunk, shares why MOPs is all about supporting your teams. He discusses the role of MOPs in internal customer success, the importance of knowledge transfer, using documentation and learning from your team to level-up.
Robbie Whetzel is the Marketing Operations and Technology Manager at Splunk. He is a Solutions Architect with ten years of experience within Marketing Operations. His organizational skills allow him to work in a fast paced/dynamic environment. He focuses on communication with project stakeholders which let him provide the best technical solutions based on the business requirements.
How can MOPs contribute to internal customer success?
I want team members or individuals who aren't on our team but use a platform that we're managing to reach out to me or our team if they're stuck. It doesn't matter how big or small the problem is, we’ll figure it out. At the same time we're helping those team members, we're learning from those requests. Maybe another benefit will come from that.
Making yourself available to the internal customer gives them the confidence to try to do things on their own, which can cut down on your workload. They may work on a problem more before coming to our team to get help to complete their project. I want our team to be the starting point for questions. If no one on our team knows the answer, we at least know who to direct those individuals to.
How can you transfer knowledge to your team and empower them?
Knowledge transfer starts with documentation. You can absolutely “over document” something. Focus instead on how to document and bring it back together. Understand the current knowledge that your team has of a system or a process and keep it basic without getting into the weeds of details.
Sometimes you get the requests when somebody says, “Hey, I need this done right now. It shouldn't take more than an hour,” but you know it’s much more complicated. In that kind of scenario you can actually get on the phone to screenshot and physically show them what needs to change and how it connects. Once they visually see the solution, they know it's not going to be a quick fix that can be done in an hour.
I've done training where I recorded myself on zoom so people can go back to watch it and come up with questions. That helps point them in the direction for the type of documentation they need.
What has more of an impact on career growth in MOPs: certifications or experience?
I could care less about certificates. You get stressed out preparing for the certification. If you don't pass that certification or that exam, you start second guessing yourself. What was the point of the certification if you end up second guessing yourself?
It took me three tries to pass the Eloqua exam. I barely passed on the third try. It made me second guess everything that I had been doing for the last eight years. Then, after I got that certification, I didn't really get anything out of it. It didn’t help my career and it didn’t help me make more money. I can add to my LinkedIn profile and that’s about it.
Some jobs and careers really do need certifications to do the job. For me, as long as you're open-minded, you can learn all of this in time. You’re going to learn a lot more from real world or practical use cases that you gain with experience.
