Marketing departments have a lot of information at their disposal, including customers’ behavioral and demographic data and internal data on spending, productivity and ROI. The question is whether marketers can take advantage of that information to do their jobs better.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that CMOs who are able to assemble the talent and technology necessary to take Big Data and turn it into actionable insights will be the ones who find success for themselves, their departments and their companies. And an essential element in achieving this success will require cooperation with CIOs — a task that’s proved difficult for many in the past.
This week we’ve gathered articles on Big Data skills CMOs need to develop and on the importance of learning to cooperate with CIOs — even when it’s hard.
- The CMO and CIO: A New Powerhouse for Digital Transformation. The Guardian: “The most influential “power couple” these days to deliver against this digital expectation is the relationship between an enterprise’s chief marketing officer (CMO) and chief information officer (CIO). Why is that? According to Gartner, by 2017 the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. Marketing departments are purchasing significant amounts of technology and services from their own capital and expense budgets…. In the past, marketing and IT have been like oil and water. But now leading CMOs and CIOs know they must align to gain a competitive edge in the marketplace and develop a joint strategy that is helping to produce some of the most innovative, customer-focused solutions we are seeing in the market today, at companies like L’Oreal, Stanley Black & Decker and GlaxoSmithKline to name a few.”
- Big Data – Why Breaking Down the Silos Between Marketing and IT is Essential. Fourth Source: “The CMO is at the heart of a data revolution which means companies have access to unprecedented (and growing) volumes of customer data; from billing information and account behavior to how customers interact with social media and customer service channels. Use it right and the benefits can be impressive – management consultancy, McKinsey, estimates that data-driven companies are five per cent more productive and six per cent more profitable than others. However Big Data initiatives require a mix of skills and knowledge to deliver success. Despite their long-standing rivalry the CIO and CMO need to work together, and pool their talents, if Big Data is going to deliver Big Profits.”
- Valos Advantage: Skills and Implementation Challenges Around Insights and Accountability. Marketing: “‘The modern day CMO understands that data is critical, but the skill lies in understanding the actionable insights that will drive business growth and improve customer experience. Those with inquisitive and analytical minds tend to ask more questions and demand their teams dive deeper into the data,’ says Paula Parkes, head of marketing for Adobe Digital Marketing in Asia Pacific. Unfortunately, and fortunately, the modern CMO is drowning in data. But they need to develop the skill to sort through the massive amount of data now available without getting lost or side-tracked. If they do this they have the source of a major competitive advantage.”
- CIOs, CMOs at Least Agree to Disagree for Now. FierceCIO: “The recent study ‘Big Data’s Biggest Role–Aligning the CMO & CIO,’ by the CMO Council and SAS, surveyed 237 marketing and 211 IT executives on the relationship between the two, and how it may be changing. ‘After reading through the survey results, it is clear that CMOs and CIOs are (finally?) starting to see the value in working together,’ notes Eric D. Brown, writing in a blog on Dynamic CIO. ‘Sure I’m generalizing here because there are many CIOs and CMOs who’ve always worked well together, but in the organizations that I’ve worked with in the past, there was a pretty wide gap between the IT group and the marketing group and rarely did anyone work to close that gap.’”
- What Makes a CMO Powerful. Bloomberg: “There is, however, no magic that goes along with the mere appointment of a CMO. We find that companies having CMOs do not, as a class, outperform companies that lack the position. Clearly, some CMOs drive high revenues and healthy margins, but others do not. This might seem like a very simplistic statement but it gets to the heart of the matter. It behooves us, both marketing practitioners and academics, to understand what the successful CMOs and their firms are doing right.”
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