CMO and CIO struggling with their new relationship

Today I received an interesting news item from Accenture Interactive that makes a timely follow-on to yesterday'sarticle  where I talked about a company embracing digital marketing, quoting comments made by John Travis, Adobe's VP brand marketing, on how his relationship with Adobe IT has changed in response to the demands of digital marketing.

Accenture has released Cutting Across the CMO-CIO Divide, a survey of more than 1,100 senior marketing and IT executives around the globe. The press release was headlined "Divide Between CMOs and CIOs Narrows, but Companies Still Struggle To Deliver Integrated Digital Marketing Solutions." Because it was a rerun of one conducted a year earlier, Accenture was able to pick out some interesting trends.

Collaboration is increasing.

 "Nearly one-quarter (23 percent) of respondents believe collaboration between the two teams is currently at the right level, up substantially from last year’s CMO-CIO Insights survey that stated only one in 10 respondents felt collaboration was at the right level."

But so are the tensions as digital marketing ramps up.

 "40 percent of CMOs believe their company’s IT team does not understand the urgency of integrating new data sources into campaigns to address market conditions – an increase of six percentage points from last year’s survey."

"43 percent of CMOs now say that the technology development process is too slow for the speed required for digital marketing, compared to 36 percent who held that view a year ago."

"43 percent of IT executives said that marketing requirements and priorities change too often for them to keep up, an increase of three percentage points from last year’s survey."

"25 percent [of CIOs] now believe that CMOs lack the vision to anticipate new digital channels, compared to just 11 percent who expressed that view last year."

Accenture Interactive says that, in the four years it has been conducting the research, it has "never seen CMOs and CIOs as interested in working together as they are now. A sea change is happening as more and more CIOs put marketing IT at the top of their agenda."

But also CMOs are putting IT high on their agenda I've just interviewed David King chairman and CEO of US based Wifi vendor AirTight Networks who told me that sales of WiFi gear are increasingly being made through the CMO not the CIO, hat getting the CMO involved can often shorten the sales cycle significantly and that CMOs often have a bigger IT budget than CIOs.

Why are CMOs getting so interested in WiFi? Because AirTight's technology does more than just WiFi, making it particularly relevant for a new development in 'digital marketing'. I might say something about that tomorrow.