CMOs as Stewards of the Digital: But Collaboration with CIOs is Rare
Caren Fleit
C-Suite Exec | Independent Board Director | Operating/P&L Leader | Strategic Talent Management | Marketing/Digital Transformation
The stakes are high for CMOs to deliver on their organization’s business strategy, including harnessing the potential of digital. Digital strategies, in fact, are at the center of the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) role. In Korn Ferry’s recent CMO pulse survey, 74% of CMOs said the head of digital reports to them.
Digital means more than digital marketing. Within a customer-centric organization, digital means leveraging online platforms and technical tools to both understand and engage customers in an omni-channel environment—across media and sales channels and all customer touchpoints. Achieving these goals is typically furthered with a seamless partnership between the CMO, Chief Information Officer (CIO), and their teams. In some cases, the teams are so close, they are merged or co-located within the organization. When marketing and technology work closely together, the resulting synergies can bring out the best of their respective capabilities, and help them better pursue the organization’s goals in complete alignment.
Even though CMOs are tasked increasingly with driving their organization’s digital transformation, often they are missing an important collaborative opportunity. The survey found that only 20% of CMOs work most closely with the CIO, out of all the C-level positions. In contrast, 34% work most closely with the Chief Operating Officer, and 30% with the Chief Financial Officer.
The lack of collaboration between CMOs and CIOs in many organizations may help to explain why less than one-third of CMOs reported that their organizations are fully transitioned to digital/social/mobile strategies. Nearly half (41%) said it will be another 1 to 3 years, largely because of not having the right staff.
To further the digital transformation of their organizations, CMOs need to:
· Forge closer collaboration with CIOs, particularly to leverage big data to derive meaningful insights that contribute to business strategy and help organizations better understand, reach, and engage customers.
· Provide strategic leadership to drive change and achieve quantifiable business results.
· Put in place the right team to support a digital strategy, particularly to mine meaningful insights from big data.
· Become more fluent in the language of the CIO (just as the CIO should be fluent in CMO-speak). In addition, best-in-class CMOs and CIOs should speak the language of the enterprise-wide goals and the priorities of the CEO and board.
As stewards of the digital, CMOs are leading transformations that touch every aspect of their organization. This is a tall order—well beyond marketing, alone. To be most effective, CMOs should collaborate closely with CIOs, in order to leverage the best of marketing and technology capabilities for a holistic approach that is far greater than the sum of independent parts.
If you'd like a copy of the full CMO Pulse Report, please email me at [email protected].
Communication | Leadership | Relationship Building
7y"Learning each other's language" is a product of proactive knowledge management. Any learning organization needs to incorporate in its systems a way to share the lexicon across the organization so that it remains internally transparent, and so that jargon becomes a source of empowerment rather than a source of frustration. One way to do this is with an internal wiki, the use of which is not only supported, but encouraged participated in by management.
Brand | Product Marketing | Performance | Transforming brands and accelerating growth with data-driven omnichannel strategies | Consumer | B2B
7yAgree! I would also add that as a critical & necessary organizational change impacting all exec stakeholders, digital transformation requires the unwavering commitment of the entire C-suite.
In my reporting on this subject over the years, the need for CMOs and CIOs to work together is always stressed. BUT the reality is something far different. Organizational structure contradicts collaborating. I've interviewed executives that claim it's taking place, but it's mostly lip service. These groups are competing with each other for resources and recognition. The competitive environment pits them against each other and some of the most popular stories I've written acknowledge this. Marketing wants something and IT is tasked with obtaining, implementing and supporting it. It's thankless work with little credit or compensation. At least that's how the tech folks in a retail organization often see it. Add in the part where solution providers need to develop a different set of literature and tools for each department to address the different goals and even different languages used -- and it's a miracle anything is understood, adopted and used successfully.
So happy to see someone finally someone calling attention to this organizational hot potato. The most high functioning, exciting, successful work we have done always brings these two key roles together.