44% of companies expect a collaborative CMO-CIO relationship to boost profitability
The Covid-19 pandemic has acted as a wake-up call to businesses and has resulted in enterprises beginning to adopt the opportunities presented by digital technologies to make the most of this new normal. The pandemic has influenced businesses and categories with far-reaching implications.
Time for CMO-CIO collaboration
One such paradigm shift that has happened is around the changing interplay between the roles of the chief marketing officer and the chief information officer and their likely convergence within an enterprise.
A recent survey by Infosys, a global leader in IT consulting, has revealed that the chief marketing officers' people-centred skill set and chief information officers' insights into enterprise IT systems are vital to the success of this new collaborative ecosystem, globally.
Nearly 44% of top-tier companies expect a collaborative CMO-CIO relationship to boost profitability by 5% or more, as per the findings.
Why it's become critical for Marketing and IT to come together?
- The research pinpoints both current and future initiatives that can serve as a guide for chief marketing officers and chief information officer to build adaptability and resilience within their organizations. Both IT and Marketing are the two core business disciplines that are at the fore-front of this sweeping digital transformation
- The CMO-CIO collaboration, if done well, could serve as a force multiplier to drive revenue and digital maturity while evolving the organizational DNA in this digital age.
Key findings:
- Nudge from the top: The drive to include stakeholder capitalism is clearly coming from the top as 83% of surveyed senior executives strongly agree that CMO-CIO collaboration can play a pivotal role in mapping and aligning business needs with stakeholder demands. Nearly 44% of top-tier companies expect a collaborative CMO-CIO relationship to boost profitability by 5% or more.
- Time to move CX (customer experience) to HX (human experience): Although 51% of IT respondents believed the chief marketing officer role would be replaced altogether, there is still hope for the chief marketing officer – as the role is likely to move beyond customer experience to delivering human experience.
- CMOs are better placed to deliver: Chief marketing officers are in a unique position to ensure the human experience is at the centre of everything a company does. They are also well-placed to communicate the company’s social purpose to stakeholders. For the collaboration to work well, chief marketing officer would need to work with chief information officer and the wider C-Suite.
Personalized experiences would be the way forward for profitable growth
- Even as the digital channels take precedence over other channels and continue to grow in this new normal, human experience continue to take centre stage, across businesses. The pandemic has altered the way engagement is viewed across every touch point, and expedited the need for relevant and personalized experiences.
- According to Sumit Virmani, chief marketing officer at Infosys, “The pandemic has not only altered the way engagement is viewed across every touch point, but it has also accelerated digital transformation, creating a need for relevant and personalized experiences. Now is the time, more than ever, for chief marketing officers and chief information officer to collaborate to deliver tangible business outcomes.” When the dust settles, companies that will emerge stronger will be the ones where the marketing and technology functions took joint ownership to drive digital transformation and engage customers in a meaningful way, he adds.