Disconnect Between CMOs and CIOs Threatens Marketing Effectiveness of Companies

A disconnect between chief marketing officers (CMOs) and chief information officers (CIOs) threatens the ability of companies to deliver effective customer experiences, according to a new study by Accenture. The study, based on a survey of 400 senior marketing and 250 information technology (IT) executives in 10 countries, revealed that only one in 10 of the executives believes collaboration between CMOs and CIOs is currently at the right level.

CIOs appear to be more committed to greater collaboration than CMOs, according to the report, The CMO-CIODisconnect. More than three out of four CIOs surveyed – 77 percent – agree that CMO-CIO alignment is important, compared to 57 percent of CMOs participating in the survey. However, despite CIOs appearing more open to engaging with CMOs, only 45 percent of CIOs say that supporting marketing is near or at the top of their list of priorities.

Regarding the use of technology, CMOs and CIOs agree that technology is essential to marketing and that its primary purpose is to gain access to customer insight and intelligence (60 percent of CMOs and 73 percent of CIOs). But while CMOs claim that gaining customer insight is their number one motivator for collaborating with IT, CIOs rank this tenth on their list of reasons to work together. CIOs’ top motivation for collaborating is to improve the customer experience, which CMOs rank as their third most important motivator.

Challenged Collaboration in Action
The report reveals that when collaborating on a marketing initiative, neither the marketing executives nor the IT executives come away satisfied. According to the survey, 36 percent of CMOs say that IT deliverables fall short of the desired outcome, and 46 percent of CIOs say marketing does not provide an adequate level of detail to meet business requirements.

The survey also shows that a disagreement over the freedom and control of the use of technology and data also prevents effective collaboration. While 45 percent of CMOs say they want to enable their teams to leverage and optimize data and content without IT intervention, 49 percent of CIOs counter that marketing uses technologies without consideration for IT standards.

A Positive Shift
Despite the issues in collaboration raised by the survey, both CMOs and CIOs believe their relationship has improved over the past year: 45 percent of marketing executives and 47 percent of IT executives share this opinion. Additionally, almost an equal number of CMOs (41 percent) and CIOs (42 percent) believe that significantly more collaboration with each other will be required to drive relevant customer experiences. 

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Gartner Survey: 75% of Government CIO Budgets Flat or Increasing in 2013

Despite a continuing drive to lower the cost of IT services, nearly 75 percent of government IT budgets globally were reported as flat or increasing in 2013, according to the Gartner Executive Programs 2013 CIO Agenda survey.

When compared to other sectors of the economy, the relatively brighter IT budget outlook in government may be short-lived, according to Gartner analysts. Gartner's CEO and Senior Executive Survey 2013 indicates that private-sector business leaders are poised to boost investments in e-commerce, mobile, cloud, social and other major technology categories. Despite this, Gartner projects a modest compound annual growth rate of 1.3 percent for IT spending in the government and education sectors through to the end of 2017, with increased spending for IT services, software and data centers. These increases are offset by reductions in internal technology services, devices and telecom services.

CIOs in government indicated that reducing overall business costs is now more important than reducing IT costs alone, which will permit government CIOs to accelerate enterprise-scale initiatives. The business and technology priorities of government CIOs are strongly aligned with their peers from all industries globally, with a few small differences.

For the third consecutive year, reducing enterprise costs ranks among the top three business priorities for government CIOs in 2013. In conjunction with the imperative to deliver operational results and the need to modernise IT applications and infrastructure, CIOs have affirmed the means by which IT can be used to transform government agency operations and their own bottom-line accountability to do so.

The top three technology priorities in 2013 have all changed since 2012, with business intelligence and analytics moving from No. 5 to the top spot, followed by legacy modernization and IT management. By placing analytics and business intelligence at the top of the list, government CIOs are addressing government's need to proactively manage programs and services.

As part of the CIO agenda survey, strategic priorities are also investigated and ranked. Improving the government IT organization and workforce has moved to the No. 2 spot in 2013 from No. 9 in 2012, which shifts the responsibilities of CIOs and IT professionals away from most legacy technology services to underserved areas of business need.

The CIO Agenda Survey also indicated that 76 percent of government CIOs have significant leadership responsibilities outside of IT, with only 24 percent having no responsibilities beyond IT. The average tenure of government CIOs is 3.8 years, compared to an average of 4.6 years across all industries.

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U.S. workers found to outperform offshore staff

U.S.-based workers show more initiative and are more innovative and more understanding of the business than offshore workers, a new study that looks on sourcing services in the U.S has found.

These qualities are helping to boost use of domestic IT services, especially as companies move to cloud-based services, said HfS Research, an IT services research firm and consultancy.

Domestic workers also work harder than offshore staff, but not by much. The difference was 83 percent to 79 percent when responders were asked to assign attributes to their U.S.-based and non-U.S.-based staff, said the report, which was based on a survey of 235 enterprise buyers of $1 billion or more in revenue.

In most areas associated with productivity, U.S.-based staff exceeded offshore staff by wide margins in this survey. When it came to cultural and communication skills, U.S. based staff was rated 82 percent versus 33 percent for offshore staff. In taking initiative, it was 77 percent to 40 percent, and for being innovative, it was 77 percent to 45 percent.

When the survey looked at specific IT services functions, the findings narrowed some, but with U.S.-based workers maintaining leads nonetheless. Survey takers were asked, for instance, how satisfied they were with application development work, 77 percent said they very satisfied and satisfied with U.S.-based staff, versus 61 percent for offshore. For IT help desk, it was 71 percent to 54 percent, in favor of U.S. workers.

source: InfoWorld

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