• Twitter
  • Linkedin
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • email
Sensei MarketingSensei MarketingSensei MarketingSensei Marketing
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact

Is the War Between Marketing and IT Over?

By Sam Fiorella | Sensei Perspective | Comments are Closed | 28 August, 2014 | 0

The strained relationship between marketing and IT departments, it’s a tale as old as time (well, at least as old as the invention of computers). There’s certainly no love lost between these two; marketers request digital work to be completed in a month but it takes the IT guys that much time to stop laughing at the marketing team’s request and timeline.

Conversely, IT departments are often myopic in the way they work, too focused on the task’s parameters, technology, and security concerns to understand the bigger business need. Few companies have been able to find common middle ground between these two important business functions.

The good news is that we’re seeing positive movement on this front. Business executives are focusing more and more on the prospects of big data – that nebulous and ever-expanding cloud of historical consumer activity, social media commentary, and market research. We know there’s gold in dem der hills but extracting the value remains one of today’s great business challenges.

It’s this very challenge that necessitates a stronger alignment between marketing and IT departments and that has us wondering: Is the war between marketing and IT over?  The formula for successfully mining big data in a timely and on-budget fashion demands better communication and cooperation between these two groups. In fact, it may require something of a merger.

McKinsey & Company shared a case study this month that showcases the importance of this partnership.

A global company recently decided to do what many companies are doing: figure out how to turn big data into big profits. It put together a preliminary budget and a request for proposal that in effect asked vendors to take the data the company had and identify opportunities.

Vendors were thrilled with what was essentially a free pass to collect and analyze everything (with due regard for customer privacy concerns, of course). Two months later, the bids were coming in 400 percent over budget. The obvious solution was to narrow the scope, but no one was sure what to cut and what to keep because the chief marketing officer (CMO) hadn’t specifically defined the most important data requirements, and the CIO hadn’t reviewed the request for proposal or intervened to prevent the inevitable above-budget bids. Months of wasted time and spending later, the company is no closer to a big data plan.

The New CMO-CIO Partnership

CMOs (and marketing agency chiefs) must lead their teams towards a better understanding of the science of marketing, which includes data mining, analytics, and customer lifetime value calculations. It’s no longer enough for marketers to develop creative campaigns that increase brand awareness and fill the sales funnel.  They must be able to analyze transactional, personal, and social data – in combination – in order to discover accurate business trends and opportunities.

CIOs are not off the hook here; technology teams must move beyond their operational and support focus to become revenue enablers.  This can be achieved by removing obstacles that limit the speed at which data can be accessed, integrated, and used.  They must foster a greater understanding of business and consumer analytics among their teams so that the technology, hardware, and related operational practices within the organization are driven by an acute awareness of changing consumer patterns.

McKinsey & Company stated it very succinctly, “It may be a marriage of convenience, but it’s one that CMOs and CIOs need to make work especially as worldwide volume of data is growing at least 40 percent a year, with ever-increasing variety and velocity.”

Sensei Debates

Will big data force a merging of marketing and IT departments?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

Big Data, Marketing Accountability, Sales & Marketing, Sensei Perspective

Sam Fiorella

Sam Fiorella is a Partner here at Sensei Marketing, a consulting and technology firm focused on aiding global companies grow their business value through improved customer experiences. Professionally, Sam has also co-authored: Influence Marketing: How To Create, Manage and Measure Brand Advocates and is a Professor of Marketing at Seneca College and an Adjunct Professor at Rutgers Center for Management Development. Sam is also the co-founder of YellowIsForHello, a not-for-profit corporation that seeks to decrease the rate of suicide among students through peer-to-peer connections.

More posts by Sam Fiorella

Related Post

  • Ipsos Study: 80% of Marketers Still Tied to “Soft Metrics” as Social Success Measurement

    By Sam Fiorella | Comments are Closed

    A study by Ipsos OTX, conducted on behalf of the Association of National Advertisers, caught our attention this week. The study was commissioned to gauge how marketers are currently measuring the success of their onlineRead more

  • “The Fat Jew” and Instagram – All That’s Wrong with Influence Marketing

    By Sam Fiorella | 1 comment

    Josh Ostrovsky, otherwise known as “The Fat Jew” is quite a big deal these days (pun intended). Ostrovsky has amassed a large social media audience, predominately on Instagram (5.5 million followers) and Twitter (251,000 followers),Read more

  • Business Strategy: Reinventing the Rules of the Game

    By Sam Fiorella | Comments are Closed

    I spent this past weekend in Chicago, Illinois, delivering a keynote presentation to the innovative folks attending the 3M Frontline Sales Conference. At most of these events, I try to sit in on presentations offeredRead more

  • Do Marketers Need Email Marketing 101 – Again?

    By Sam Fiorella | 1 comment

    Here on the Sensei blog, we rarely plan or write marketing 101-type instructional content. There is an audience for “How to Tweet,” “What is Pinterest,” and “How to Maximize Google+ for Business” articles, and thereRead more

  • You’re The World’s Greatest Marketer, Until It’s Budget Review Time

    By Sam Fiorella | Comments are Closed

    Today’s post will share a personal case study that illustrates, once again, why I consider myself a performance marketer and why all marketers should do the same. I was reminded last month that I’m theRead more

Home
BONDAI Platform
BONDAI Services
BONDAI Partner Program
Gift My Client Corporate Gifting
About
Contact
100 University Avenue
Suite 500
Toronto ON
Canada
M5J 1V6
Phone: 1.416.484.1400
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
Sensei Marketing