CMOs who cannot effectively partner with their IT and D&A teams will fail to build vital digital capabilities

Effective coordination among different departments and teams are essential to achieve short and long team business goals. Gartner’s recent survey reveals that Marketing data and analytics (D&A) and marketing technology (martech) are among the top three capability gap areas cited by Chief Medical Officers (CMOs). 

“CMOs who cannot effectively partner with their IT and D&A counterparts will fail to build the necessary digital capabilities, such as omnichannel journey orchestration and personalization, needed to deliver a strong customer experience (CX) and achieve customer acquisition and retention goals,” said Aparajita Mazumdar, Principal, Research in the Gartner Marketing practice.

Survey data shows that 61% of CMOs said lacking the in-house abilities to deliver their strategy, which speaks to a more significant resource challenge for marketing teams. For example, martech continues to command a huge share of the marketing budget (25.4%), yet issues such as talent recruitment challenges and training underinvestments result in martech underutilization and other ROI challenges.

Here are the 5 ways CMOs should use to develop successful cross-functional collaborations with chief information officers (CIOs), chief technology officers (CTOs), and senior D&A leaders:

1. By Creating a Shared Digital Vision for the Future

CMOs must coordinate with CIO to clearly define vital digital ambitions, business objectives, and success metrics. An outcomes-focused alignment framework includes:

1. A shared vision.
2. Recognization of high-priority clients.
3. Target market success strategy.
4. The capabilities required to deliver.
5. The internal systems need to be in place to win.

IT-marketing collaborations will be unsuccessful without top-down alignment on key business goals that the different teams will be pursuing together.

2. By Creating a Technology-Agnostic Business Capability Map

The proliferation of martech solutions and vendor hype fuels marketers’ IT spending sprees. However, all these solutions result in a redundant and siloed sprawl of technologies, a loss of credibility among senior business leaders if the marketing-led technology acquisition fails, and potential underutilization.

To avoid this situation, CMOs and CIOs at leading companies must co-create a technology-agnostic future-oriented business capabilities map that attains their digital vision. In addition, set regular martech audits, conduct joint business case development, and cooperate IT-marketing talent-hiring decisions.

3. By Embracing the Shift From Projects to Products in Digital Business

Leading businesses are shifting to a product-oriented operational model within the martech and IT domains to innovate business abilities and improve CX. 

By 2024, Gartner predicts more than three-quarters of digital business leaders will have “pivoted” from project to product portfolio management, up from the third that have already done so.

4. By Building Awareness and Enable Democratized Digital Delivery

Democratized digital delivery came out of the pandemic as a way to tackle accelerated business transformation demands that exceeded the capacity of traditional IT. Progressive CIOs are leaning on this systematic approach to help non-IT employees, or business technologists, exploit technology production tools in the course of their everyday work.

Companies that democratize digital delivery successfully are 2.6 times more likely to launch and complete digital initiatives faster and with quicker time to value.

5. By Co-Creating Governance for “Marketing-Led” Digital Projects

CMOs must work with IT leaders to establish clear governance rules regarding the extent, scope, and timing of IT’s involvement in business- or marketing-led digital projects. Successful partnerships involve clear definitions of safe zones and the co-creation of an adaptive governance framework.

Source: Gartner

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