IT and marketing make common cause in the experience business

Always one customer experience ahead of the competition: In the digital age, it is not (only) the product that determines takeover success, but the experiences and services that enable and enrich it. Germany's IT and marketing decision-makers are equally convinced of this: for 59% of IT professionals and 67% of marketers, the customer experience is now a top priority. However, this task cannot be mastered alone: this is why both IT decision-makers (95%) and marketers (97%) are firmly convinced that IT and marketing will only successfully drive the experience business forward together.

This is the result of the first "CIOxCMO Barometer 2018" by Adobe, for which around 175 German IT and marketing decision-makers were surveyed. According to the survey, 63% of IT decision-makers and 74% of marketers already work closely with their company's CMO or CIO on a daily basis. And this is just the beginning: in addition to the further sharpening of customer focus (62%) and technology investments (56%) in IT as well as greater personalization (54%) and increased creativity (51%) in marketing, both areas are focusing on even closer cooperation in 2018 in order to create the most inspiring customer experiences possible (IT: 50%, marketing: 40%).

"Collaboration between IT and marketing is playing an increasingly important role in the experience business. It forms the basis for taking control of the customer experience with the help of modern technologies. The fact that IT and marketing decision-makers need to move closer together today may be seen by some as an overlap of competencies and a potential conflict. However, I firmly believe that only IT and marketing will be able to work hand in hand in the future to create even more interactive and better coordinated digital experiences," said Hartmut König, CTO Central Europe at Adobe, in a press release.

CIO and CMO are working together more and more

The relationship between the IT and marketing departments has not always been the best in the past. Even today, one in three marketers (29 percent) believe that the CIO is solely responsible for IT support. And a quarter of IT decision-makers (23%) also continue to accuse the CMO of thinking exclusively in terms of campaigns and not understanding anything about IT.

But a rethink has begun: IT and marketing are increasingly coming together. Around one in two IT decision-makers (45%) and marketers (57%) now see their company's CMO or CIO as an important strategic partner. 45% of IT decision-makers confirm that the CMO makes a relevant contribution to the company's success. The same is true of 39% of marketers with regard to the CIO. Alongside the CEO, IT and marketing decision-makers primarily see themselves as the drivers of successful customer experiences (CIO: 54%, CMO: 53%). However, while IT places the CMO almost on an equal footing (43%), the CIO still falls a little short in the eyes of marketers when it comes to providing successful customer experiences (18%).

CIOs feel they are being picked up too late on tech investments

In day-to-day practice, there still seems to be a lack of cooperation in many places: when it comes to specific investments in new marketing technologies, more than one in two IT decision-makers (55%) do not feel that the CMO is brought on board early enough to provide the best possible advice. In around one in five companies, the CMO only consults IT during implementation (20 percent) or works with external agencies (17 percent). From the IT experts' point of view, the CMO is often the starting point for technology investments (25 percent), but in their opinion the CMO lacks the IT know-how to advance digital marketing projects technologically (27 percent).

Many marketing decision-makers see the collaboration between the two areas a little differently: more than one in three marketers (39 percent) stated in the Adobe survey that the CIO is integrated into the technology investment process from A to Z. From the marketer's perspective, IT supports marketing in particular in evaluating providers (32 percent) and determining technical requirements (29 percent). For 14 percent of companies, the IT decision-maker only comes into play when the new solution is implemented.