Stage 1: Discovery & Research — Campaign Ops Optimisation

1.1 Problem Statement

The Problem I Wanted to Solve

The Problem: Campaign briefs arrive in Salesforce. The Ops lead manually copies details to Microsoft Teams Planner for assignment. Content builders and journey builders get assigned work with no complexity scoring or workload visibility. When prerequisites are missing, handoffs slip. QA happens via Excel checklists reviewed by buddy system. Ops can't answer: Is workload fair?, Where is this campaign stuck?, and Why are we missing our campaign windows?

Why This Problem Matters

This isn't just inefficiency. Campaign operations run on Salesforce MCP, Data Cloud, and Marketing Cloud — a connected platform stack. But the process treats them as disconnected silos. When the Ops lead spends 60 minutes a day manually copying from Salesforce to Teams Planner, when handoff prerequisites are discovered mid-build via email, when QA is inconsistent across reviewers, the whole pipeline slows down. Worse, builders carry unfair workload burdens invisibly: some get complex multi-channel campaigns while others get reruns, but everyone looks equally busy in Planner because campaign count ≠ effort.

The Core Tension

The team was treating all campaigns as equal units when they required wildly different effort. A journey builder handling a new multi-channel campaign build (segment rules, journey logic, channel routing, testing) carries 10x the work of a rerun where they just refresh the audience data and activate. Yet without complexity scoring, assignment feels random. Without end-to-end visibility, BU requestors chase status. Without standardized handoffs, late changes arrive as emails instead of tracked requests.

1.2 User Personas

Who I'm Building For

Through stakeholder interviews and process shadowing, I identified five distinct roles in the campaign lifecycle. Each has different pain points and different definitions of "good."

📋

The BU Requestor

"I submit a brief and then have to message the team to ask what's happening."

Profile: Marketing manager or CRM lead in a business unit. Submits campaign briefs on Salesforce and (for reruns) uploads audience data on a separate linked system. Waits for campaign build and go-to-market approval.
Core Pain: No visibility into where their campaign is in the pipeline. They submit and wait with no timeline, no status updates, and no way to check progress. Late discovery of missing requirements delays the whole campaign. They resort to emailing or Outlook messaging to ask for status.
What They Need: A structured intake form that captures all prerequisites upfront. A self-service status view where they can see if their campaign is in brief intake, content build, journey build, QA, or awaiting go-to-market consent. Automated alerts when action is needed from them.

🎯

The Ops Lead

"I copy campaign details from Salesforce to Teams Planner manually. By the time I'm done, three more have come in."

Profile: Campaign operations manager. Reviews Salesforce briefs, copies to Teams Planner, assigns to content and/or journey builders based on gut feel about who's available. Tracks progress, handles escalations, and runs daily standups.
Core Pain: Manual copying of campaign details from Salesforce to Teams Planner every time. No complexity scoring to objectively assess campaign effort, so assignment is gut feel. No way to prove workload distribution is fair during performance reviews. Single point of failure — all knowledge is in their head. Can't track SLA accurately when BU causes delays by not providing content or audience data on time.
What They Need: Automation that pulls campaign briefs from Salesforce and surfaces them with complexity scoring. Data-informed assignment recommendations based on current workload across builders. SLA tracking that distinguishes team delays from BU delays. An at-risk dashboard showing which campaigns are stuck or nearing due dates.

📧

The Content Builder

"I get assigned campaigns before the BU has provided all content and assets. So I wait, and it looks like I'm slow."

Profile: Email/SMS/push content specialist. Builds the creative and HTML for campaigns. Depends on BU providing final copy, images, and approvals before they can handoff to journey builder.
Core Pain: Gets assigned campaigns before prerequisites are ready (copy not finalized, brand approval not given, assets not uploaded). Back-and-forth approvals happen in email or chat — nothing is tracked in Salesforce. Idle time waiting on BU doesn't show as BU-caused delay; it just looks like the content builder is slow. No way to communicate readiness status to journey builder.
What They Need: A clear "ready to build" gate that prevents assignment until prerequisites are met. A Kanban board in Salesforce showing their assigned campaigns and current stage. Approval routing that tracks who approved and when. A handoff checklist that forces both content and journey builder to confirm readiness before work transitions.

🔄

The Journey Builder

"I get late handoffs from content, and change requests arrive mid-build via email. There's no standard process."

Profile: Marketing automation specialist. Builds journeys and segment rules on Data Cloud, then journey logic on Marketing Cloud. Works downstream of content builder. For reruns, only assigned the journey builder (no content builder needed).
Core Pain: Late handoffs because content builds run over. Missing prerequisites at handoff (data segments not created, suppression lists not defined). Change requests arrive informally via email saying "actually, can you also add in-app messaging?" QA process is inconsistent: buddy system using Excel checklists with no standard of what to check. Manual Data Cloud refresh cycles with BU verification loops cause delays.
What They Need: A defined handoff stage with a checklist of prerequisites (data segments ready, suppression rules defined, channel routing approved). A formal change request process tracked in Salesforce, not Outlook emails. A standard QA checklist in Salesforce that every reviewer follows. Automation to refresh Data Cloud and notify when BU verification is needed.

✅

The QA Reviewer

"Evidence is scattered across email, screenshots, and chat. Different reviewers check different things. There's no standard."

Profile: Peer QA reviewer (typically another journey builder). Checks journeys before activation. Responsible for sign-off, evidence collection, and audit readiness.
Core Pain: Evidence scattered across email, screenshots in random folders, and verbal confirmations. QA uses an Excel checklist that's inconsistent — different reviewers check different things. Audit prep takes days because nothing is centralized. No visibility into what the original builder tested or what QA already approved.
What They Need: A standardized QA checklist attached to each campaign in Salesforce. Evidence upload fields that are required before the campaign can move to activation. A clean audit trail showing who QA'd, when, and what they tested. Comments linked to specific campaign elements, not scattered across email threads.

Shared Pain Points

⚡ No Complexity Scoring

"New multi-channel build vs. simple rerun — they're treated the same in assignment. There's no way to fairly distribute work."

🔁 Manual Intake Duplication

"I copy from Salesforce to Teams Planner manually. It's 60 minutes a day I could spend on actual work."

⏱️ Handoff Delays

"Content-to-journey handoff happens via chat. Prerequisites are discovered mid-build, not upfront."

🔍 Inconsistent QA

"Excel checklist is manual. Different reviewers check different things. No centralized evidence trail."

1.3 Research Method

How I Researched This

It Started as an Operational Pain

I was embedded in the campaign operations team, watching the same problems repeat: campaign briefs arriving without all required info, the Ops lead manually copying to Teams Planner, content builders waiting on BU approvals, journey builders discovering missing data segments mid-build, QA happening inconsistently via Excel.

I started asking structured questions: Where does work get stuck? What decisions is the Ops lead making daily that a system could support? Why do some handoffs go smoothly while others slip?

Research Activities

Method	Participants	What I Learned
Stakeholder Interviews	Ops Lead, 2 Content Builders, 3 Journey Builders, 2 BU Marketing Managers	Ops copies from Salesforce to Teams Planner daily. Assignment is gut feel. QA varies by reviewer. BU doesn't know campaign status without asking.
Process Mapping	End-to-end campaign lifecycle from brief to go-to-market	Ops lead spends ~60 min/day on manual intake. Average 1-2 day delay between content approval and journey build start. Three separate approval loops (BU approval, QA approval, go-to-market consent).
Data Analysis	Campaign records in Salesforce, Teams Planner tasks, Marketing Cloud journey data	Campaign cycle time varies 3-15x depending on complexity, but complexity is never captured. Reruns assigned to both content and journey builders when they only need journey builder.
Tool Audit	Salesforce MCP, Teams Planner, Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Excel QA checklists	Five disconnected tools. Salesforce is source of truth for briefs, but Planner is source of truth for assignment. Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud are separate workflows. QA evidence is nowhere.

What I Heard from the Team

"I copy every campaign from Salesforce to Planner manually. By the time I'm done, three more have come in." — The Ops lead, on the manual intake duplication that takes 60 minutes daily.
"I get assigned work but the BU hasn't uploaded their audience data yet. So I wait." — A journey builder, on premature assignment before prerequisites are ready.
"My buddy checks my journey build with an Excel sheet. We each check different things — there's no standard." — A journey builder, on the inconsistent QA process.
"I submit on Salesforce and then I have to message the team to ask what's happening. There's no status page." — A BU requestor, on lack of visibility into campaign progress.
"The journey builder needs my content approved before they can start, but sometimes I'm still waiting on the BU for changes." — A content builder, on late BU approvals that hold up handoffs.

1.4 Friction Analysis

The Systemic Friction Points

From interviews, shadowing, and data analysis, five root causes emerged that explained nearly every complaint:

Friction	Root Cause	Impact	Severity
Manual Intake Duplication	Ops lead copies campaign details from Salesforce to Teams Planner every time. Double handling, error-prone.	~60 min/day lost to manual admin. Data always slightly out of sync between systems.	Critical
No Complexity Scoring	All campaigns treated equally. No way to derive effort from campaign type, channel count, or audience size.	Workload distribution is invisible. "Fair" assignment is impossible to prove. Unfair workload distribution is also invisible.	Critical
Disconnected Tools	Salesforce for briefs, Teams Planner for assignment, Data Cloud for segments, Marketing Cloud for journeys, Excel for QA. No single integrated view.	Builders context-switch between 5+ systems. Handoff information doesn't flow. QA evidence is nowhere.	High
Informal Handoffs	Content-to-journey handoff happens via email, not tracked. Prerequisites discovered mid-build instead of validated upfront.	Average 1-2 day delays between stages. Rework when data segments aren't ready. No audit trail of what was requested vs. approved.	High
BU-Caused Delays Invisible	When BU delays approval or data upload, it doesn't show as a blocker. Journey builder waiting on BU for 3 days looks like they're slow.	Unfair performance judgements. SLA metrics are misleading. Can't distinguish team performance from external blockers.	High

Key finding: These five frictions are interconnected. You can't fix handoff delays without standardizing intake, because if briefs are complete upfront, handoffs don't slip waiting for missing prerequisites. You can't fix workload fairness without complexity scoring, because fair assignment requires knowing real effort — not just campaign count.

1.5 Opportunity Sizing

How Big Is This Problem?

I quantified the operational cost of the current state to make a case for investment. These are based on time tracking and actual campaign records, not estimates.

Ops Lead Admin Time

Manual copying from Salesforce to Teams Planner, assignment, status chasing, standup prep

~60 min/day

Handoff Delays

Average time between content approval and journey build start

1–2 days

Tool Switching Overhead

Builders context-switch between Salesforce, Teams, Data Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Excel

5+ tools

What "Good" Would Look Like

If the product works, the measurable outcomes are: Ops lead admin time drops from 60 min/day to under 15 min through automation. Handoff delays reduce from 1-2 days to same-day handoff because prerequisites are validated upfront. Builders work in one integrated system (Salesforce) instead of context-switching. Workload distribution is measurable and provably fair. QA is standardized and audit-ready from day one.

1.6 Key Takeaways

What My Research Told Me to Build

From everything I learned, five design principles emerged that guided every product decision from here:

#	Principle	Why
1	Standardise intake upfront — capture all requirements on Salesforce before assignment	Prevents premature assignment, eliminates Teams Planner duplication, gives BU a checklist of what they need to provide.
2	Score complexity automatically — derive effort from campaign type, channel count, audience size	Fair workload distribution depends on knowing real effort. Assignment can be data-informed instead of gut feel.
3	Connect the toolchain — Salesforce → Data Cloud → Marketing Cloud as one integrated workflow	Eliminates context-switching, makes information flow automatically, creates a single source of truth for each campaign.
4	Standardise QA — replace Excel buddy system with structured Salesforce-based checklists	Consistent quality outcomes, centralised evidence for audit, faster approval cycles.
5	Make blockers visible — track when campaign progress is held up by BU vs. internal team delays	Fair performance measurement, honest SLA tracking, clear escalation paths when BU is blocking.

Decision: Move to Stage 2. Research confirmed this is a real, quantifiable operational problem with clear root causes. The team is already in Salesforce, so the solution should augment the platform rather than introduce a new tool. I had enough confidence to define the product vision and strategy.