The parallel universe of today’s CIO and CMO

My March 2013 blog post entitled Is there still room for the CIO and CMO at the top table ended with me wondering how the roles would evolve in 2013.

Since then there’s been lots of blogs pondering just that. Some have been apocalyptic asking questions such as is the CMO dead? (I can assure you all the CMO’s I know are fighting fit!) Others have considered how CIOs and CMOs could better bond, even blend their roles in a marketing/tech mind meld.

Regularly meeting with CIOs of European enterprises has validated for me just how much CMOs and CIOs have in common as internal service providers focused on driving business transformation.

The CIO as service provider is a growing trend. This new breed of CIOs is less concerned with acquiring technology than the use of technology to deliver best value for the business, measured in service outcomes. They are building their team(s) to provide the business with best in class, highly competitive services so internal customers do not have to consider going to an external provider.

CMOs are following a similar route when it comes to serving their stakeholders across the business. Marketing now owns more of the sales funnel, by creating awareness and carrying out programmes to deliver better qualified opportunities to sales. At Colt we are also playing a key role in a bid to support and account based marketing, by offering high quality services that make a difference at the coal face.

Listening to customers, it’s clear that the service provider role empowers the CIO much more than the traditional position of ‘keeping the lights on'. For example, one customer who has transformed IT into an internal service has seen his team grow from 50 to more than 200 professionals and his board room authority increase.

The profile of talent required has also changed. In developing their teams CIOs are emphatic that they no longer recruit those who do the plumbing but instead look for a new breed of IT experts who apply a business perspective. So not people who like getting under desks and being knee deep in cables for hours but those who know how to apply technology to solve business challenges and deliver a service outcome.

Again I see parallels for the CMO here. Traditionally marketing had a transactional function to create and distribute content. Now, we are involved much more in helping the business listen and understand what customers want and taking part in discussions about how we develop long term relationships with them. This shapes our thinking about the marketing campaigns and programmes we create and direct, drawing on the expertise and experience of external providers for marketing content and infrastructure.

A closer partnership between CMO and CIO makes natural sense and is in no way the ‘shotgun’ wedding that some imply. There’s so much common ground and shared values which are nicely listed by Gartner Analyst Jennifer Beck’s blog. I particularly appreciate her line about how both CMOs and CIOs are victims of experts elsewhere in the business. I would pull down that virtual suggestion box if I could!

However, I would modify her view of our partnership a little. I think it needs to be redrawn as a triangle to connect the CMO and CIO with the leader of the sales team. This is an important relationship for the CIO because the increasing use of things such as collaboration tools, access to real-time customer data and critical documents anytime means that sales has become an important internal business customer. The sales and marketing relationship is well documented and perhaps a little clichéd by now but it should be recognised that sales is just as big a user of Shadow IT tools, such as Salesforce, as the marketing department. Well, ideally anyway!

Marketing technologist…

The success of my team is dependent on how easy it is to consume digital marketing technology. And don’t get me wrong I expect to have people in my team who can recommend the best tools to use. All I ask is that the CIO is working to the same rapid timeline as me, with a heightened service provider mindset so they are walking to the same beat., This ensures that marketing and other lines of business aren’t tempted to bypass IT and buy digital services in other ways and even worse online with a company credit card.

So there really is a parallel universe and I for one look forward to the CMO and CIO relationship continuing to blossom!