On February 9 2017, ClickZ held the webinar ‘Aligning Marketing and IT: How CMOs and CIOs can work together more effectively‘, in association with Zayo.
According to data gathered for the report ‘Communications Infrastructure: The Backbone of Digital,’ 88% of IT professionals and 61% of marketers ranked their company’s current communication infrastructure as ‘cutting-edge’ or ‘good.’
There is a divide between marketing and IT when it comes to priorities and working together. How can this gap be bridged? Mike Veeder of Zayo, Chris O’Hara of Krux – Salesforce, and Andrew Warren-Payne discussed the report, and considered where marketing and IT might find common ground.
There are many gaps in thinking between Marketing and IT
Only 19% of marketers who participated in the survey believed that their marketing and IT groups worked closely together to ensure the best possible delivery of their product/service.
This gap can be attributed to a difference of priorities between marketing and IT. The top priorities for marketers are on revenue growth and customer retention while, IT’s emphasis is focused on avoiding risk and data security.
With consumers spending two-thirds of their time on mobile devices, the difference in perception between how marketers and IT view the mobile channels of their communication infrastructure is particularly worrisome.
Big data and connected world: A possible way to bridge the gap
Only 15% of marketers surveyed ranked their ability to influence communications infrastructure strategy as excellent. Two possible ways for marketers to find common ground with their organization’s IT department could be found with Big Data and the Connected World.
Fifty-six percent of IT professionals report that managing and optimizing for ‘big data’ is very relevant for their organization. From a marketing perspective, to provide a personalized customer experience, data processing is expected to be instantaneous.
The second most commonly cited challenge for IT professionals in the survey was adapting to the ‘connected world’. The data from connected devices have the potential to drive a good deal of customer experience and advertising which is of great importance to marketers.
IT and marketing come together in a layer cake process
Chris O’Hara speaks about a ‘data center of excellence’ which has three groups of participants:
- Media team
- Analytics
- IT organization
These three groups need to work together to determine what kind of data they have, what are the key IDs and can they become one key ID, and how to come together on a regular basis to make sure their goals are aligned.
Additionally, IT professionals and marketing come together in a ‘layer cake process’: there is a technology layer, an orchestration layer and finally, Artificial Intelligence as the top layer. AI is what drives performance, and makes sure the layers of the cake operate together.
AI will make working together even more significant
In the future, organizations could find AI to be a burden if they do not prepare.
The need for data to be delivered in real-time makes speed and connectivity a large factor. AI, as well as other mediums such as video and mobile, will dominate the need for data to be transported quickly and effectively. Failure to do so could have a negative effect on an organization.
Interested in learning more about bridging the gap between marketing and IT? Then watch the Aligning Marketing and IT webinar on demand.
For more information on how you can get involved with the ClickZ Webinar Series, please contact [email protected].
This webinar was produced in association with Zayo. Click here to read our collaborative content guidelines. Views and opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ClickZ.