One of the difficult challenges for a CIO is to be taken serious as a businessperson who really understands fundamental business principles and has keen and strategic insights of how to use technology innovatively and effectively to deliver profit to a company. Let’s face it most CIOs today at Fortune 1000s do not sit on the Board of Directors. There are a few but they’re a minority. Many CIOs have focused their careers on technology management and not innovation. The times are changing and CIOs today, regardless of the size of the companies they work for, need to contribute directly to growing revenue and creating new markets. New digital media and interactive technologies are driving this demand since these technologies are affecting the way we live, buy and communicate.
Today’s CMOs are challenged with a rapidly changing social global environment and they have to effectively communicate the company’s brand voice using media channels such as TV, Print, Radio and Online, while the “new” social media web is shifting traditional marketing paradigms socially and technologically. Brands are faced with trying to figure out how traditional media and social media marketing channels should work together and where they should put their resources. The self-directed and community influenced consumer—most of us today—influence brands’ futures like never before. CMOs typically don’t have a clue on how to effectively implement technology, though they often think they do—which probably contributes to why the average lifespan today of the CMO is 18 months, according to some reports. On the flip side, most CIOs and the organizations they oversee don’t have a clue on how to effectively implement these “new” technologies either! And, they think marketing is just another “user” in the company they have to deal with.
Historically, there has been a dissonance between the CIO and the CMO. Marketing and IT departments live at odds with one another. Marketing is trying to find ways to effectively communicate the brand voice though the most viable channel. They have money and they need to use it most effectively. Yet, they can’t get anything done without IT sign-off or the IT police watching their every move. IT on the other hand is always being pushed to support more with less money and people. They have to clean up the messes that Marketing causes when they “covertly” sign bad deals with technology providers that often negatively impact and put at risk, in some instances, the business and technology environment. Marketing is pressed to be innovative and has the money; IT is pressed to do more with less money. Not an environment that will naturally foster a healthy and productive relationship.
Here’s the opportunity. Learn each other’s worlds intimately and instead of constantly being at odds, join forces. CIOs and CMOs need to deliver a business plan to executives that dedicates technologists to Digital Media. The ROI is there. Who should they report to and who gets the dotted line? It depends on the company. Focus less on the org chart and focus more on the business objectives, then your company will be able to determine the best reporting structure. Some companies are heading this way yet the majority of the Fortune 1000s are still in denial they need to change despite feeling the pressure.
There is no better time for the two to walk down the aisle of matrimony: the new CIO really needs to understand marketing and the new CMO really needs to understand technology. Do it together. Never the twain shall meet? Who knows maybe some day they’ll be no distinction. The two will become one flesh. LOL!
Dennis Pannuto is the President & Founder of Aha! Insight Technology. You can reach him at dennis.pannuto@ahainsight.com
