IT: The CMO's New Best Friend

by Sharon K. Hatzel, Market Researcher, The Anderson Group  

A recent survey of 1700 Chief Marketing Officers (“From Stretched to Strengthened, Insights from the Global Chief Marketing Officer Study,” IBM) indicates that those who are most effective are now focusing on getting to know individuals, not just markets. They mine new digital information sources and use customer analytics to turn data into insights on which their organizations can act. This also means they have to develop a more symbiotic relationship between the departments where customer feedback enters, from IT to customer service.

To begin fostering this relationship, CMOs must re-define their role in organizations to better account for the influx and influence of online and social media feedback.  Frequently, online information comes into the organization through the IT department, but it also enters through a variety of other areas, such as customer service, sales, accounting, human resources or even manufacturing. Social media comments must be monitored in order to understand how customers are interacting with products, services and the organization overall.

The challenge to Marketing: How can they manage the message if they have little or no control over much of the message interaction? Through their improved relationship with IT, CMOs can better access information and identify how to implement new technologies to analyze and understand this deluge of information. Developing better lines of communications within an organization provides a variety of perspectives to help understand what the customer is looking for/getting from the organization.

Agencies who are actively working to understand this information flow are in a position to help these organizations start to figure out how to manage, collect and analyze the data now available.