We have heard regarding the need for interdepartmental collaboration, but a brand new 2014 report from Forrester CMOs And CIOs Must Turn Collaboration Into Action published this month points out that there should be talking and more action.
The analysis follows this year’s yearly poll by Forrester and Forbes Insights of 308 advertising and technology management leaders to understand how CMOs and CIOS are working across four core dimensions: people, process, technology, and information.
There were several positives — the poll did show that tech and marketing direction leaders were more understanding of one another’s strategic priorities in 2014 than they have been previously and are doing this by better communicating with one another. The poll showed that 70 percent of technology management leaders and 59 percent of marketing leaders said their CMO and CIO now meet regularly to review objectives and priorities — a rise on this past year.
Business support
There needs to be support to achieve objectives. Worryingly the survey revealed that only 54% of marketing and tech management professionals believed that the direction was in place to support marketing technology strategies.
For many businesses the poll revealed that there was a difference in understanding of advertising technology between the two departments with just 58 percent of technology leaders thinking their marketing team knows marketing technology — compared to 71% of marketers who felt their team understood.
The report revealed that among those continuing failings of both parties has been among the biggest challenges that they face — the capability to turn the tremendous quantities of information that divisions are collecting into actionable customer insights which companies can really do something useful with.
Marketing should ask the questions
Report author Sheryl Pattek proposes creating a data centre of excellence — tasking marketing with defining the right questions to ask and making sure tech management work to place the correct infrastructure in to encourage asking these questions.
The survey revealed that whilst over three quarters consider customer intelligence is critical to their enterprise, less than half have a single view of the client. Confusion remains rife over who does what and that is hampering progress.
The Forrester report warns that CMOs and CIOs must take action or they risk being pushed aside by a new breed of executive — the chief digital officer who is better tasked to make the modifications required. The reports’ authors sum it up best:”Time is of the essence, as the marketplace will not wait as CMOs and CIOs continue to talk about cooperation while failing to behave.”
