How CMOs and CIOs Can Align to Drive Organizational Growth

For decades, C-suite executives, including CFOs and COOs, have partnered closely with their respective CIOs to use technology to support their agendas by digitizing supply chains, accounting and payroll systems. The digitization of the C-suite has helped translate business challenges into solvable problems, and the adoption of AI will only make this collective collaboration for better business results.

However, when it comes to partnerships with the CIO, an executive role has had a significant disadvantage: CMO. According to new insights shared by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and the Institute for Real Growth (IRG), less than half (46%) of marketing leaders said they have effective collaboration with their CIO counterparts. In fact, CMO-CIO engagement was ranked the lowest overall compared to relationships with other C-Suite executives.

“The Future of Growth: Unlocking the CMO-CIO Partnership” The report highlights how this disconnect can have a significant impact on businesses, as CMOs oversee systems that directly interact with the customer and the company’s growth and revenue goals. Without a close partnership with CIOs, not only do CMOs fail to capitalize on martech and other technologies, but they also miss the opportunity to align critical business goals, such as data-driven decision-making and increasing customer engagement.

Challenges with CMO-CIO collaboration are typically rooted in a lack of mutual understanding, lack of consistent and frequent communication, and misaligned goals and objectives, according to the report. These issues can have real-world consequences in impeding organizational growth – potentially resulting in missed opportunities for value creation, inefficient resource allocation and slowed digital transformation.

The good news is that the gap between CMO and CIO can be bridged.

To achieve a high-performing CMO-CIO relationship, organizations must embrace five elements of “humanized growth” discovered by the study, including to:

• Earth– aligning IT and marketing roles
• Reimagine-creating a vision of the future for marketing and technology
• Focus– embracing common KPIs and a holistic martech strategy
• to organize-Create balanced, whole-brain teams where creativity and analysis are equally valued
• ladder-focus on the importance of personal leadership and taking ownership of the success of the partnership

By focusing on these key drivers, CMOs and CIOs can break down silos, strengthen collaboration and achieve greater overall business success.

Achieving human-first understanding when goal-setting

CMOs and CIOs can gain a human understanding by starting with a detailed description of each role that goes beyond defining traditional responsibilities to create a common agenda with shared objectives and shared ownership of how marketing and IT contributes to overall business priorities. This should also include creating a clear process for working with external agencies and providers to ensure mutual alignment on those specific goals.

Additionally, companies can assess marketing and IT capabilities to identify skill gaps and resource constraints. Once identified, they can jointly develop a plan to address these gaps through training, education and working with external partners.

Creating a structured plan for cross-functional learning and ongoing knowledge sharing, such as attending each other’s industry conferences, internal training sessions and shadow teams can enable these roles to gain a first-hand knowledge. Embracing a “give 60%, take 40%” mentality fosters human empathy and emphasizes mutual investment.

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Create a shared long-term vision for the future

Instead of starting with current capabilities, companies can start by defining their ideal future state. This collaborative process should involve both CMOs and CIOs to visualize how marketing and technology could work together to reach that future. And this vision should not only be shared internally;

CMOs and CIOs aim to evangelize externally to gain stakeholder buy-in and create excitement.

Rather than attempting a massive, all-in-one implementation of martech, organizations can adopt a targeted approach, starting with small, high-value projects and using short-term, data-driven feedback loops to adapt and improve.

Financial integration and performance indicators to drive change

CMOs and CIOs must differentiate between incremental improvements (adaptive changes) and major changes (transformative changes). By focusing common resources on transformative initiatives, organizations can significantly impact their business, according to the results of the study.

Organizations can create a single, integrated budget that incorporates marketing and technology priorities. This type of collaborative budgeting can build shared accountability and better alignment around financial priorities.

Developing a common set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that track marketing and technology results can reflect the shared vision of these executive roles and facilitate ongoing evaluation and course correction.

Break down barriers in employment and recruitment

Organizations can establish cross-functional teams that include members of marketing and IT, which can break down traditional department silos.

Cultivate an open, transparent and collaborative work environment that encourages frequent communication, informal meetings and knowledge sharing initiatives can build stronger interdepartmental understanding. Involving the CMO and CIO in an organization’s key recruiting decisions can ensure that new hires possess the necessary skills and collaboration skills to operate effectively.

It promotes a culture of collaboration and strong communication

CMOs and CIOs must actively model the desired collaborative behaviors within a company. This can include publicly endorsing each other’s initiatives, celebrating each other’s successes and progress on shared benchmarks. As with many things, culture is key. Establishing a culture of open feedback and continuous improvement between both executives and their functions, including regular input from teams, stakeholders, and customers to adapt strategies and initiatives, can allow growth and better communication.

To maintain the desired culture and correct course when necessary, companies can regularly assess the level of interdependence in a team, with the aim of achieving a balance between independence and dependence on others.

A strong CMO-CIO relationship is essential to drive sustainable, stakeholder-focused growth. By focusing on these five key drivers of humanized growth – organizations can foster a collaborative, high-performance partnership across these two functions. The potential rewards go beyond that of enhanced customer experience and improved operational efficiency – this closer alignment also fosters greater collaboration between the larger C-suite, better business results, and a more unified vision for the organization.

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