A Strong ‘CIO and CMO’ Bond Can Boost RoI by 25 per Cent

In 2015, IT leaders supporting marketing will need to build a stronger partnership with marketing

Increasing marketing technology investments are demanding more involvement from IT leaders to enable marketing to achieve full business value from its investments, according to Gartner. In 2015, IT leaders supporting marketing will need to build a stronger partnership with marketing and help to evaluate solutions (architecture, functionality, scalability, performance and security), source data, manage and consolidate the application portfolio, and integrate solutions.   

By 2018, CIOs who build strong relationships with CMOs will drive a 25 percent improvement in return on marketing technology investment, says Gartner.

Marketing is a high area of technology investment, and that investment continues to grow rapidly with digital marketing expansion. Gartner has found that many large companies, particularly business-to-consumer (B2C) companies, have more than 50 applications and technologies supporting marketing. Managing this portfolio and generating customer value from these technologies requires a more integrated and consolidated approach, but not at the expense of marketing's ability to innovate in digital marketing.

Personalization enhances the relationship between a buyer and seller, making the buyer feel recognized, appreciated, respected and efficient. Today's consumers expect recognition, to be valued and to have a personalized experience; they have little tolerance for inefficiency. These expectations will be even higher for business buyers who typically have longer-standing relationships with their suppliers and spend higher amounts with them.

Personalization also enables sellers to remain competitive and drive customer satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy as well as increase profitability. Consumers who have personalized experiences spend more. Companies that incorporate personalization into B2B digital commerce strategies will make their business customers more efficient, provide a better customer experience and increase the likelihood of greater purchase value as well as upselling and cross-selling — all leading to greater revenue.

Voice of the customer (VoC) solutions collect, analyze and act upon the vast array of customer feedback sources that are potentially available, ranging from surveying to social media to speech analytics. It is an increasingly popular area of focus due to the business value that is obtained from acting upon the derived insights. However, VoC's ownership is currently inconsistent with different constituents who are taking responsibility within different organizations.

VoC is one area where IT leaders can demonstrate their importance to the organization through their understanding of the different technologies that are deployed across the different business units and through their ability to provide a more integrated solution that focuses on the customer and not just one business domain. Ultimately, IT's role will be to help support a corporatewide VoC initiative regardless of who owns it.

 

Kobe 13 A.D. Shoes


Add new comment