I'm a fan of Forrester's work in pushing forward the evolution of the marketing function, marketing operations and particularly the better use of technology. We both sing from, more or less, the same hymn sheet. Peter Kim has written up some key points on their blog and has also published a new report described here (but which requires $s to buy or a subscription to read).
To quote Peter's executive summary:
Today's marketing organizations are broken. Three out of four marketing departments have reorganized in the past two years. Almost 80% of marketers don't influence a critical customer interaction like customer service, and 85% don't even own the "four Ps" of marketing anymore. To regain effectiveness, marketers must transition to a Customer-Centric Marketing Organization. Doing so requires: 1) redesigning P&Ls and metrics; 2) shifting culture away from marketing communications; 3) investing in a customer relationship infrastructure; and 4) rethinking agency relationships.
A subset of this discussion is that marketing and IT need to work together to fix many of these issues - but in practice they rarely ever communicate effectively. Hence, for a couple of years Forrester has tracked the divide that exists between marketing and IT functions. A subject we know well, because in our day jobs we build apps and other solutions designed to optimize marketing operations. So I can 100% endorse Peter's view about the gulf that usually exists between marketing and IT.
Then, recently, a funny thing happened.
We won a big new contract from a premiere league web commerce company. Great, but so what? Well, this time the project was handed out by the corporate IT function. Whereas normally, we win these projects from marketing folk who buy-in to the business case, but then have to convince their IT people we can be trusted to build that enterprise-class marketing app (or whatever) that they've been demanding for so long.
The attitude of this IT department was different, to colourfully paraphrase...Well we want to stick to doing the Real Man's Programming (ie building the online engines that drive the business), so let's find a supplier who can speak marketing to the marketing dept, deliver all that marketing stuff they keep nagging us for, but can also be trusted not to bring the whole show down from a compliance and architecture perspective.
Effectively, we have been asked to be the bridge between marketing and IT. Translating in both directions and keeping both stakeholders happy. One off or a trend? I couldn't say. In future, as marketing departments build deeper analytical and technology skills, it shouldn't be necessary - but today it certainly is.
Tags: Forrester, Marketing