Digital Transformation: marketing and IT in leadership

By Matthew Gharegozlou, Progress Vice President for Latin America and the Caribbean

The strong pressure of the new business scenario - in which the connected, impatient and over-informed consumer empire requires a holistic, seamless journey across all platforms - falls largely on technology and marketing professionals.

 
These two professionals, by the way, have been used to working together for a long time and, both, have also become accustomed to interacting with other areas, such as finance, sales, human resources, inventory, production and high-level business.
 
What changes substantially now is the way in which this relationship takes place in light of the new strategic objectives. If before, the marketing specialist looked to the CIO and his team to anchor their campaigns through tactical technologies, now the interest is different.
 
Together, marketing and IT need to develop a strategic, data-driven approach that will help these companies to identify, attract and engage customers in a more meaningful way - through a personalized and consistent customer experience.
 
So, more than ever in business history, the marketer (CMO) and the CIO need to not only interact, but also work together to integrate all other departments in aligning the new journey of digital business transformation.
 
They need to be aware that, although each department and business function depends on a growing arsenal of devices and applications to deal with the challenge of converting bits and bytes into businesses, it is the role of these two professionals to know and catalyze the demands and potentials of all areas of the company to build a single path that will lead the process, from the definition of the offer to the moment of the purchase decision (and action) by the customer.
 
More technologies don't mean a better digital experience
With the market and customers more fickle than ever, organizations live with the very real threat that there is always a newer, fresher and more agile business ready to take their customers.
 
To combat this risk, the most conventional temptation would be to throw money at new technologies and expect this movement to create a shortcut to digitization. But the technical answer is no longer valid. Likewise, making analog processes digital will also not work from now on.
 
Although technology clearly has a role to play in this reality, it is the CIO's role to set aside (at least for a moment) his IT certainties to really understand the marketing director's "pain of callus" and, together, to unravel the needs specific to a particular business scenario.
 
Marketing and IT together must promote a holistic, strategic approach, rather than tactical technology to meet customer needs. Only then will they help to keep the company on the business wave in "real time" and long-term perspectives.
 
No more Departments
Facilitating a truly collaborative approach of this nature means actively breaking down departmental silos. Once again, a new space for intervention and influence in business opens up for the CMO / CIO duo, helping the company to get rid of departmentalization on islands and to break with management by "islands". They must take advantage of their tradition of dialogue and the provision of internal services to lead this process of abolishing silos, creating systems and processes capable of involving the entire company in the journey of digital transformation.
 
Developing an understanding of what the project involves and having all parties moving in one direction is perhaps the biggest challenge that any company will face in the coming years.
 
It is important to note that this is not just a case of greater communication and understanding between departments. There needs to be a call to unity and the sharing of responsibilities and competences in terms of a single project. Companies around the world are actively considering seeking (or already seeking) new talent who have skills in IT and marketing, which means that they must not only understand the different needs of each of these disciplines, but must also act in concert. with both.
 
Anyone who does not renew or revamp themselves to these new paradigms is bound to be left out of the evolution of business.