Marketing Planning Systems & Operations Lead

Vanguard•Malvern, PA

18h•Hybrid

About The Position

This role serves as the business owner and subject matter expert for enterprise planning platforms, including Airtable, Workfront, and related technologies. The lead will define and execute the roadmap for these systems, ensuring they evolve to support organizational priorities and operating model needs. Key responsibilities include designing, configuring, and maintaining workflows, data structures, automation, governance standards, and reporting capabilities. The role also involves evaluating and implementing system enhancements to improve user experience and operational efficiency, partnering with technology teams and vendors, and leading adoption efforts through training and change management. Additionally, the lead will design and maintain scalable planning processes, establish standards for initiative tracking and portfolio monitoring, and translate business requirements into effective system and process designs. A significant part of the role involves managing the department's planning and portfolio dataset, ensuring its accuracy and usability for decision-making, and developing dashboards and reports for leadership visibility. The lead will also integrate planning workflows with governance and operational controls, support forecasting initiatives, and enable proactive risk identification. Strategic enablement includes supporting planning activities, recommending improvements, leading cross-functional initiatives, and staying current with emerging technologies. Special projects and other duties as assigned are also part of the role.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience.
5+ years of experience in planning operations, business operations, marketing operations, project management, PMO operations, portfolio management, or related disciplines.
Experience administering enterprise planning, project management, workflow, or portfolio management platforms.
Experience designing and implementing operational processes and governance frameworks.
Demonstrated ability to translate business requirements into scalable system and workflow solutions.
Strong analytical skills and experience leveraging data to support business decisions and operational improvements.
Experience managing complex initiatives involving multiple stakeholder groups.

Nice To Haves

Experience with Airtable, Workfront, Smartsheet, Asana, Jira, Monday.com, or similar platforms.
Experience supporting planning, intake management, portfolio visibility, governance, workflow management, or operating model transformation initiatives.
Experience leading platform implementations, migrations, or enterprise process redesign efforts.
Experience building dashboards, reporting frameworks, and portfolio analytics solutions.
Experience within marketing, content operations, creative operations, or large matrixed organizations.

Responsibilities

Serve as business owner and subject matter expert for enterprise planning platforms, including Airtable, Workfront, and related planning technologies.
Define and execute the roadmap for planning systems, ensuring capabilities evolve to support organizational priorities and operating model needs.
Design, configure, and maintain workflows, data structures, taxonomies, automation, governance standards, and reporting capabilities.
Evaluate and implement system enhancements that improve user experience, planning effectiveness, visibility, and operational efficiency.
Partner with technology teams and vendors to support integrations, upgrades, and platform optimization initiatives.
Lead adoption efforts through training, communication, documentation, and change management programs.
Design and maintain scalable planning processes that support decentralized planning while creating consistency across the organization.
Establish standards for initiative tracking, planning data collection, portfolio monitoring, and operational governance.
Translate business requirements into sustainable system and process designs that enable teams to plan effectively and efficiently.
Continuously assess current-state processes and identify opportunities to reduce friction, improve transparency, and increase planning maturity.
Partner with stakeholders across Marketing to ensure planning systems and processes support evolving business needs.
Serve as steward of the department's planning and portfolio dataset, ensuring information is structured, governed, and maintained to support organizational decision-making.
Define and manage portfolio-level data requirements including strategic alignment, initiative attributes, dependencies, resource signals, work demand, and governance indicators.
Develop dashboards, reporting solutions, and portfolio metrics that provide leadership visibility into priorities, workload, operational risks, capacity considerations, and portfolio health.
Establish data quality standards and governance practices that ensure planning information remains accurate, actionable, and trusted.
Leverage portfolio data to identify trends, opportunities, bottlenecks, and operational improvements.
Design planning workflows that create visibility into upcoming work and downstream operational requirements.
Partner with teams responsible for content governance, approval processes, and operational controls to ensure planning systems effectively support end-to-end workflow visibility.
Create data structures and process integrations that allow governance requirements, operational dependencies, and workflow milestones to be visible earlier in the planning lifecycle.
Support initiatives that improve forecasting of work demand, operational impacts, and potential approval requirements across the marketing portfolio.
Enable proactive identification of portfolio risks and dependencies through reporting, process design, and system capabilities.
Support annual, quarterly, and ongoing planning activities through platform administration, reporting, portfolio analysis, and operational enablement.
Recommend improvements to systems, processes, governance structures, and planning methodologies.
Lead cross-functional initiatives that strengthen Marketing's planning capabilities and operational effectiveness.
Stay current on emerging planning technologies, portfolio management practices, and workflow innovations to continuously improve organizational capabilities.
Lead special projects and perform other duties as assigned.