Congratulations—you’ve been promoted! You’ve made the leap from individual contributor to people manager, and now you’re staring at a whole new playing field. It’s exciting… and let’s be honest, a little intimidating.
If you’ve read The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, you know how critical this window is. Your early decisions shape how others perceive your leadership. But too many new managers play it safe—taking time to observe, trying not to rock the boat. The reality? The longer you wait to make an impact, the harder it becomes to shift momentum in your favor.
So, where do you start? How can you prove you were the right choice for this role—and build a foundation for long-term success?
Here’s one powerful, often-overlooked lever: modernizing your marketing operations. Specifically, launching a Marketing System of Record like Shopperations.
Why This Move is a Game-Changer
In many CPG organizations, a large part of the marketing process still lives in spreadsheets, PowerPoint decks, email chains, and in the form of tribal knowledge (people’s heads). It works—until it doesn’t. As a new team lead, you now have a golden opportunity to introduce structure, transparency, and alignment where chaos once reigned.
Implementing a centralized marketing operations platform does more than clean up processes. It gives you a chance to:
1. Showcase your strategic chops
Rolling out a new system isn’t just a tech upgrade—it’s a business initiative. It requires stakeholder alignment, change management, and a clear vision. Leading this effort demonstrates that you're not just managing tasks—you’re thinking big picture, solving for scale, and bringing a strategic lens to marketing. We all know that what got you to this point in your career is not what will help you succeed. The higher up you go, the more important strategic capability development becomes.
2. Make an immediate, visible impact
Let’s face it—marketing leaders are under pressure to drive results fast. By eliminating inefficiencies, improving visibility, and streamlining planning, you can boost your team’s productivity within weeks. Fewer fire drills, better meetings, more time for actual consumer research, development of campaign ideas with your agency, testing and learning new marketing tactics (the actual work that marketers signed up for). But it’s not only your team that will be more productive, your marketing dollars can work harder, too. With a transparent system of record, you can automate and expedite post-program analytics and make quick changes to your plans before retail partners set their merchandising plans in stone.
3. Build your digital transformation muscles
Championing a platform like Shopperations gives you hands-on experience with enterprise transformation. You’ll gain technical confidence, learn how to work with IT, Data Science and Finance, and build the kind of digital acumen that opens doors down the road—whether you stay in marketing or pivot to broader roles in the future.
4. Leverage your insider knowledge
Having lived the pain of disconnected plans, manual reporting, and version-control nightmares, you know what’s broken. You know what would have made your old job easier. You don’t need to be taught why the deduction management process is so painful or the nature of coupon redemptions is so unpredictable. You know the kinds of shareouts and reporting that various matrix stakeholders require of your team and why retail media planning can’t happen in isolation from the JBP process. That’s your superpower now. Use it to shape a solution that truly works for your team—because nobody else can.
5. Elevate your team’s reputation
When your planning is more transparent, your budgets are more accurate, and your cross-functional partners are better informed, people notice. When P&L owners see that your team is responsibly managing every penny, they no longer ask for basic status updates, rather come to you for strategic advice. You shift from being seen as a cost center to a value driver. From reactive to reliable. From siloed to strategic.
6. Leave a legacy
Tools come and go, but the processes and systems you put in place can outlast your time in the role. That's the real impact. Whether you move on to a new role, go to work for another company or retire years from now, people might not remember every campaign you ran—but they’ll remember how you changed the way marketing gets done.
A Real-World Example
Need proof this works? Look no further than Craig Bilow, who recently took on the challenge of building a shopper marketing capability from scratch at Riviana Foods.
Instead of easing into the role, Craig went full speed ahead. In his first 90 days, he didn’t just hire a new agency—he also implemented Shopperations as the centralized planning platform to manage them. He understood that the right systems would make everything else easier: from budgeting and reporting to collaboration and execution.
The results? Craig’s team gained instant credibility inside the organization. They moved from ad hoc plans to a structured, data-driven approach that helped them punch above their weight. In a matter of weeks, he laid the groundwork for a sustainable, scalable shopper marketing function.
📄 Read the full case study here
Craig’s story shows what’s possible when new leaders embrace the moment. The first 90 days aren’t just about surviving—they’re about building something meaningful.
Craig is just one of many success stores. Our other CPG clients have achieved amazing results deploying a system of record that helped them simplify, scale, and optimize their marketing operations. Check out our free on-demand webinar: CPG Marketing, Simplified. How top CPG brands streamline planning and boost productivity
You’ve got this. Let’s make these first 90 days count.
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