Agile Ops in B2B Enterprise: Wärtsilä’s Strategy for Surviving Change

 

This session, presented by Adele Hekila and Jaime Lopez from Wärtsilä (a global marine and energy technology provider), details the core team, technology, and process strategies that enabled their traditional B2B enterprise to survive massive external and internal challenges in 2020, including industry downturns, layoffs, and a major organizational change.

Key Takeaways

 

• The Challenge: Wärtsilä’s Marine division faced simultaneous challenges: a global industry shift to digital, reduced manpower, and a huge internal organizational restructuring.

• The Solution: Solid Groundwork: The key to survival was having foundational strategies for the team, processes, and technology already in place, enabling rapid adaptability.

• Fairness & Autonomy: The team operates on a principle of fairness and high trust, allowing individuals the autonomy to manage their own hours and location as long as ambitious targets are met.

• Productize Everything: Standardizing and productizing routine tasks (like webinar requests) frees up “rock stars” to focus on high-impact, passionate development projects.

• Structure Creates Value: Standardized structures and naming conventions across all tools are mandatory for efficiency, fast onboarding, and comparable data visualization.

The Agile Ops Team Structure

 

Manager Jaime Lopez outlines the foundational principles and diversity required for a highly adaptable marketing operations team.

1. Foundational Principles

 

• Fairness and Trust: Decisions must be fair and guided by trust, which allows for an enormous degree of autonomy (e.g., freedom to work on their own hours/location). This made the transition to virtual work seamless.

• Mastery of Basics: Every person must be proficient in the core tools (Pardot, Salesforce, GoToWebinar, CMS) so that any team member can step in to cover a basic need.

• Ambition and Purpose: The team has an ambitious goal: to be the best data-driven B2B marketing team. This intrinsic motivation drives higher achievement (e.g., scaling webinars from once a quarter to 15-20 per quarter).

2. The “Tetris” Approach (Hiring Diversity)

 

The team actively hires people who do not look like them in terms of competence to foster productive disagreement and cover blind spots. Roles include full-stack marketers, developers, execution specialists, and performance analysts.

The Technology and Process Strategy

 

Adel Hekila details the practical strategies for efficiency and fast enablement across the MarTech stack.

1. The Core Principle: Solid Groundwork

 

The team believes that future challenges are inevitable, so consistent process planning and structuring must start today. If the groundwork is solid, energy is spent on developing on top of the wheel, not reinventing it.

2. Consistent Way of Working

 

Standardized processes create efficiency and the ability to quickly enable new team members.

• Process Documentation: Every major activity (e.g., arranging a webinar) has a documented, end-to-end process that details required tasks, marketing assets, lead responsibilities, and post-webinar actions.

• Standardized Doesn’t Mean Static: While the basic process is standardized, the team is always encouraged to innovate on top of that basic brick using learned best practices.

3. Structures and Naming Conventions

 

Consistent structure is not just “a cool thing to have”; it creates measurable value.

• Cross-Tool Consistency: Wärtsilä uses the same naming convention throughout Salesforce, Pardot, and GoToWebinar (including year, business line, and content tags).

• Efficiency and Reporting: This structure allows any team member (even those not responsible for the campaign) to easily see all connected assets, understand what is included in the campaign, and compare data from start to end of the year.

4. Transparency Tools (Multiple Systems)

 

The team uses a few specialized tools to create transparency, trust, and accountability across the globally distributed team.

• Salesforce/Pardot: Used for execution and reporting, governed by the structured naming convention.

• Asana (Project Management): Used for shared calendars, budget tracking, and task management. All processes are automated here. This tool creates transparency on workload and avoids duplicates/ad hoc requests by giving the whole marketing team visibility into scheduled content and who is responsible for what.

• Microsoft Teams: Used for internal discussion, file storage, training materials, and collaborating with external departments (like finance).

Conclusion: Three Steps to Survival

 

To build a team and system that can survive massive internal and external change:

1. Start Today: Consistency in planning and execution is key. Respect the structure in your technologies because it creates efficiency and value.

2. Give Autonomy and Responsibility: Trust your people to control their own work. This fosters the trust, transparency, and personal ownership needed for highly effective virtual teams.

3. Raise the Difference: Actively seek diverse perspectives in your hiring, as learning from each other’s weaknesses creates stronger outcomes.