Q & A

One of the struggles that many companies face today is creating a collaborative environment for their marketing and information technologies departments. These areas are often at odds, with each department often not fully appreciating or understanding the other. But each business area works differently, and each is very necessary to the overall success of your company. This means that a healthy working relationship between the IT and marketing departments is a must.

At the MarketingProfs Business-to-Business Forum, June 8-9 in Boston, Cisco’s Theresa Kushner will lead a session that will explore this challenge, look at how companies can move past it, and help your company get its marketing and IT departments on the same page, and working together.

Q – At the MarketingProfs B2B Forum, you'll be leading a session entitled Marketing and IT: Forging a Unique Partnership. Many companies seem to struggle with getting their marketing and IT departments on the same page, why do you think this is?

A – It's a case of left brain, right brain. Marketers are traditionally more creative, for every problem they can find at least 50 different solutions. That doesn't often work well for IT who often seems to be more analytical in the approach to a problem—one problem, a few possible solutions, one best solution. While marketing wonders why it takes 6 months to update a system, IT is wondering why Marketing can't understand that system updates are very complicated matters. This difference in the way both approach a problem that sets the organizations on different planes to start then you add in the language barriers—techspeak versus marketspeak—and you have a real standoff.

Q – One of the topics you plan to cover in your session is the necessary roles that both marketing and IT fill in most businesses. Do you think part of the disconnect between these two departments is often due to neither fully understanding the impact of the other, or appreciating the importance of each area?

A – Absolutely. And the disconnect begins with the objectives that each has. IT is concerned with stability, integration, control and management. Marketing, on the other hand, values speed to market and innovation born of an iterative process—trying several avenues before something really works. Imagine IT employing that philosophy—let's just try these three new applications first before we decide which one will integrate best with our sales, manufacturing and financial systems. Although marketers know that IT is critical to their success, IT doesn't always consider marketing among the "mission critical" applications and systems that they support. It's very necessary for both organizations to understand the impact that each has and to appreciate the differences in their approaches.

Q – What are some red flags that a company should look for to alert them to potential communication issues between their marketing and IT departments?

A – The first red flag is the proliferation of systems outside the control or management of the IT department. Marketing is usually very expert at getting their systems built "under the radar of IT." They build databases, deploy workflow systems, and generally "shadow" as much IT capability as they can without being put in the corporate penalty box. Another red flag that IT and marketing are not playing well is the cost in time and money. If marketing and IT are not working together, you may see project delays that result in increased IT costs.

Q – Finally, you no doubt know of many companies that have marketing and IT departments that work very well together. What are some of the steps that these companies took to foster healthy relationships between their marketing and IT departments?

A – Generally, the companies that were born on the Internet (Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc) do a better job of integrating marketing and IT. They have to—the business is technology dependent. The technology companies, in general, often do a good job of understanding why marketing and IT need to work closely together, but some are better than others. Oracle comes to mind as a company that really understands how to integrate IT and marketing. The purchase of Siebel brought some of that capability to Oracle.

Most of the companies that are good at bringing together IT and marketing are also good at integrating IT into the fabric of their business. That means that they usually have a CIO who views his or her job as the facilitator of the company's success. Another sign of companies that have figured this out is the existence of a Marketing Technologist, a position dedicated to making technology work for marketing. LinkedIn shows over 7000 people who combine marketing and technology. There's hope.

How Better Measurements Can Improve Your Profitability And Bottom Line —Q&A With Jim Lenskold

Companies in every industry are struggling to put effective measurement systems in place that track the metrics that are important to their business.  But even if your company has a solid measurement system in place, is that enough?  Are you still able to distill the results into insights that can help your company better understand how data gained from multiple touchpoints affects performance and lead generation?  Jim Lenskold, President of the Lenskold Group will lead a session at the B2B Forum that will not only show you how to improve your measurement efforts, but also how to tie the results gleamed into your business’ larger strategies for revenue and lead generation growth.  Here, Jim gives us preview of what he’ll be covering during his session at the B2B Forum, and also some advice for B2B companies that are looking to improve their measurement systems and lead generation efforts.

A – There is no question that better insight into marketing performance and ROI can pay for itself since research has shown companies applying these practices are more likely to be outgrowing their competitors. The culture is the primary barrier and that includes a combination of marketing organizations that are not numbers-oriented, marketing organizations that are not staffed to handle the additional measurement and analytic responsibilities, and companies that are sales-dominant and don’t care to understand how marketing can increase sales performance. But the solution can be quite simple if companies run pilot measurement projects to build a track record of capturing and putting new insights into action.

What’s the Recipe for Marketing Success with Social Media? —Q&A with Sandy Carter

As social media usage continues to skyrocket, companies are trying to get up to speed on not only using these tools, but finding a way to successfully integrate them into their existing business strategies.  At the B2B Forum, Sandy Carter will help attendees not only learn more about social media, but also how and when these tools should be added to a company’s existing marketing mix.  In this interview, Sandy gives us her take on the importance of social media for businesses, and some background on some of the topics she’ll be covering during her session at the B2B Forum in Boston: