Should the IT department hand over responsibility for marketing technologies to the marketing department? We're hearing notions of this ilk advocated more vigorously these days, not least of all by the software industry. A recent post at InformationWeek by Scott Brinker, president of ion interactive, caught my eye because he argued that marketing should be in charge of its own technology "from high-level strategy down to in-the-trenches code."

Brinker cites a report by the CMO Council and Accenture, which concluded that there are great opportunities these days for marketing to leverage technology and data, and that IT departments and marketing departments are frustrated with each other. In his view, these dynamics have emerged because "marketing is becoming a technology-driven discipline."

The solution, Brinker suggests, is for IT to give up responsibility for most marketing applications. Until now, he says, the discipline didn't require a lot of tech savvy. But today, marketing and its technology are closely entwined; changes are occurring rapidly in the marketing field; and marketing executives are expected to achieve goals that are affected by technology. "It's not a far leap to appreciate that once the CMO is fully responsible for the outcome, he or she will insist on having control over the means of achieving it," he writes.

But there's a catch. While IT would no longer have authority over selecting, implementing or operating the technologies, it would still be left holding the stick when things run amok. 

"IT continues to provide shared infrastructure, coordinate data and technology that crosses multiple departments (such as CRM systems), serve as a trusted consultant and enforce security and regulatory compliance as a checks-and-balances authority," Brinker writes.

I would love to hear from you on this vision, but at first glance it looks to me a nightmare in the making. As a general matter, any position that comes with enormous responsibility but without the commensurate authority to fulfill it is an untenable position. How could it be possible to ensure information security, compliance and integration in a large organization when one is not making either the strategic or nitty-gritty decisions involving whole sets of applications?

Marketing is not uniquely positioned to benefit from increasingly leveraged data and technology. Pretty much every unit and function in the enterprise is finding itself in that situation at one time or another. The human resources department is making use of social networks, microsites and other emerging online avenues for reaching out to its constituencies. The same can be said of public relations.  One could go so far as to argue that HR and PR are becoming technology-driven disciplines.  In fact, it may be hard to identify a business unit or function that isn't changing rapidly and isn't increasingly entwined with technology.

If marketing takes over its IT decision-making altogether, there's no reason that HR, PR, legal and any number of other functions won't want to follow suit. Do you want to be left in charge of the organization's information security and compliance when the information assets are relegated to a series of stovepipes?

This is not to argue that the status quo between the IT and marketing departments is the only other option. There are good reasons for business units like marketing to have IT expertise more tightly embedded in their operations. It seems to me there might be some good ways to achieve this without the IT operation ceding its authority over information assets, however. I have an idea for one possible alternative, but more on that later. For now, I'd really like to hear from you. Send me your thoughts. - Caron