Marketing and IT often have different objectives. Typically the Marketing group cares about getting more leads, more customers and growing revenue. The IT group is measured on whether they’ve implemented the right technologies, kept costs down and served the business. To be successful, there must be a high level commitment to the vision of what project will accomplish. This includes transcending the metrics the teams are measured on. In order to do this properly, roles and areas of responsibility for all members of the project team must be clearly defined.

Defining Relationship Roles and Responsibilities

The RACI model helps organizations define roles & responsibilities during a change process. The ‘A” stands for who is ultimately accountable for the success of the task, at a high level. The Marketing department should be responsible for defining the problem. They should also determine the vision for the business process. The IT department should be responsible for providing guidance on technologies. Implementation and ongoing support is IT’s responsibility. It is not enough to just define high level ownership, as the devil is always in the details – accountability for each step must be clearly defined.

What are the steps to implementing a new technology and who does what?

1. Defining the problem – This is typically the first step. Marketing needs to clearly define and communicate what the current challenge or opportunity is that they are trying to solve.
2. Defining desired outcomes – Next, Marketing must create a proposal to explain the problem or opportunity and get internal teams to buy in to try and solve it. For large enough projects it is important to have sponsors, preferably the CMO and the CIO to ensure alignment from the top down.
3. Defining the requirements – This stage of the project is an interesting one as either Marketing or IT could be accountable for this step. Keep in mind, whoever is writing the detailed requirements should have an understanding of the Marketing goals and a good idea of what can be achieved with technology.
4. Offering up technologies – The first decision that needs to be made is whether to build or buy. If the decision is to buy, or at least start by looking at what technologies are out there, this is usually a joint effort between the Marketing and IT teams. Though IT is ultimately accountable, it is critical to get buy in from the Marketing business folks as they will the the users of this technology.
5. Choosing a vendor – The next step is to choose a vendor and this is one where truly IT and Marketing have equal footing. Sometimes the owner of the budget has a little more say in the end decision, but at the end of the day the chosen solution must solve the business need and also meet IT standards.
6. Building and integrating the solution – This is where the handoff to IT begins. Depending on the decision that has been made, they build the solution or buy one and integrate it into the existing technology stack.
7. Project management – For any large project to be successful, you need a strong project manager. Since IT leads the implementation process, it makes sense for the IT team to be ultimately responsible for ensuring timeliness and quality.
8. Testing – Initial testing is usually owned by the IT team. Once they have determined the system is stable, they will hand over testing to the Marketing team. The Marketing team then validates that the requested functionality meets their need as defined in the requirements.
9. Launch – Once the new technology is ready, it should be treated like a product launch. The Marketing team needs to position the benefits of this new technology, train users and ensure adoption. Celebrating successes together is also important once the project has launched.
10. Ongoing maintenance – At the end of the day, the IT team is the team that supports all technical issues for the Marketing team. It is important for IT to have a good handle on what has been built, have resources to support it and also a relationship with the vendor to escalate issues if necessary.

Eliminating Breakups

Relationships are never easy, they take an immense amount of effort to maintain. To that end, if the relationship with your ‘work spouse’ is on rocky terrain, here is some wise counsel to encourage you to get back on the right track.

• The first, of course, is to follow a similar process to the one above. Lack of clarity around roles, areas of ownership and goals can cause a rift between Marketing and IT.
• Don’t go it alone. When the Marketing and IT leadership is not aligned, it sometimes results in either group managing to secure the budget and purchasing a rogue tool that may or may not meet Marketing’s needs or IT’s requirements. This serves no one well, ultimately making it a business management nightmare.
• Make critical decisions with the end in mind. When technology decisions are made for the sake of implementing shiny new technologies v.s. to enable a business need. If the technology does not solve a business problem, chances are adoption will be low and cause turmoil between the two teams.

Like a marriage, the relationship between IT and Marketing must be one of accountability, compromise and teamwork. Aligning these teams will ensure successful implementation of the technologies that solve business problems. And as you all work toward the success of your company, don’t forget to enjoy the ride!

The goal of marketing remains the same

My first takeaway was that the end goal of what marketing as a function is trying to achieve  has not changed at all. People want to buy from companies they trust. The goal of marketing is to build trust with potential customers and maintain that feeling of trust with existing customers.

Before the dawn of the digital age, word of mouth was the most popular method that people used to decide what to buy and from whom. Existing customers served as trusted advisors for potential new customers.  Building trust is the way that companies sell to and keep their customers today as well.

Then what has changed?

What is different today, is that now there is so much information and so many ways to get that information, that it becomes hard for the customer to figure out what is true and who to trust. An interesting statistic that was shared at the event was that 90% of the world’s data has been created in the last 12 months.

In addition, the buyer could search for information on the Internet or receive information from companies in the forms of emails, SMS messages, notifications through the website, messages on Facebook, Twitter and many other ways. They could also search or receive these messages on their desktops, laptops, iPads, mobile phones or smart watches.

It is the responsibility of companies today to help the buyer cut through the noise and consume the information that is relevant to them and helps them figure out what product or service will best meet their need. The challenge or opportunity, depending on how you look at it, is how do companies leverage all this data and these different technologies to deliver relevant messages to people through their preferred way of receiving them? The focus should be to begin building this trust with potential buyers and existing customers by making them feel like they have a 1 on 1 relationship with the company.

What technology trends can help you do this?

The 5 key technology trends that were the underlying theme of most sessions at the event were:

• Cloud – In the State Of The Cloud report by RightScale, 95% of the enterprise organizations that were surveyed used cloud technologies. What that tells me is that IT organizations are moving away from managing hardware to managing software. The availability of applications in the the cloud has raised the bar for performance, stability and time to market for new functionality. This has leveled the playing field to some extent as similar capabilities could be available to companies to use as they try to sell to, service and keep their customers.
• Mobile – Technology companies have been talking about making their tools available on a mobile device for some time now. What is new is that they are now talking about mobile first and mobile only. Techcrunch predicts that by 2020 there will be 6.1B smart phones in the world. Compare this to the projected population in the world in 2020 at 7.7B people. A large number of the smart phones will be the only devices people use to run their lives and their business. This makes it all the more important to figure out how to build products that are easy to use on a mobile device and also build those relationships with potential buyers and existing customers using this device.
• Social – Human beings are social and want to be part of a community.  Though communities have been around forever – the difference now is that they are online. Social is nothing but an online community – the size of which is controlled by the individual. Social is both an outbound messaging channel so companies can deliver targeted messages using Facebook or Twitter; and it is also a data source to get to better know your buyer. Social is no longer just a marketing channel but it has also become a place where companies can service their customers and sell additional products to existing customers.
• Data Science – Vcloudnews states that every day 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created online. What does that even mean? The challenge is making sense of this data so that companies can use the data to better understand their buyers.  This  is in fact a science, because if analyzed and leveraged correctly companies can create superior, personalized experiences for their potential buyers and existing customers which will undoubtedly lead to more business for the company.
• IoT – My definition of IoT or the Internet of things is the ability for a device to record an activity and trigger a communication when a certain condition is met. Companies have only started to scratch the surface on the use cases for this. The concept of devices triggering actions has been around for a long time – e.g. a thermostat that turns off the heat when a certain temperature is reached; but what is different about IoT is the ability for the device to trigger a communication that can be accessed on a variety of devices when something happens.

Some companies get excited about the potential that these new technologies offer, others are overwhelmed and not sure how to best leverage these. What is important to keep in mind is the end goal – building trust through a personalized and superior experience. Use only those technologies that help you  achieve that objective. Remember, at the end of the day, these technology trends simply equip us, and it’s really the relationship with your customer that matters.