Last week's Editor's Corner about letting the marketing department handle its own IT generated some great discussion. Thank you to everyone who added their voice to the debate, especially Scott Brinker, president of ion interactive, whose own column had prompted my editorial. Brinker replied to the editorial with some thoughtful views, suggesting that there may be more common ground in this debate than often acknowledged.

In Brinker's reply (here), he asks whether a team "can have valuable influence and governance on some issues without having complete management control over everything involving those issues?" I believe it can, and that is a good role for the marketing department to play when it comes to IT. Influencing IT decisions by effectively communicating needs and strategies, and working responsibly with the IT department is a practice all units in the enterprise should follow.

As one anonymous IT manager with a large amount of marketing responsibilities commented, there are aspects of marketing that require considerable technical skills. Nobody could disagree with that, but marketing is not unique in this regard. Nobody is getting hired in finance, sales, HR or PR these days without having to learn some technology.   

There is a gap between IT and marketing that clearly needs to be bridged, and it will take more than enhanced communication skills on either the CMO or CIO's part. To give the marketing department the influence in technology that it needs, IT experts probably need to work more closely with it--even cube-next-to-cube, if mutually desired. IT staff need to see the requirements of marketing up close by attending the department's strategy sessions and staff meetings, and  then take that understanding back to the CIO to better inform the technology decisions. If the word "embedded IT staff" is too strong, maybe "liaison" is more apt. The idea is to promote a "collaborative team view," as Peg Archdeacon, a former AVP of marketing technology, put it in her comments (here). 

However, IT staff need to know with certainty that their bread is buttered by the CIO, not the CMO. This distinction is very important, particularly in large organizations. You can have two individuals whose goals and responsibilities are essentially the same, but if one answers to the CMO and the other to the CIO, their perspectives will be somewhat different. If an IT expert answers to the CMO, the focus will not be on the larger IT considerations that impact the organization as a whole.   

If the buck stops with IT--if security, integration, compliance and all the other costly, high-risk responsibilities associated with technology remain with IT, as they necessarily have to--then IT has to be a major presence at the front end, ultimately making the decisions and maintaining the control. 

A comment by CIO Christine W. (here) sums it up well. In her company, she writes, all technologies require her approval before they are installed. "No amount of revenue generated by Marketing is worth putting our company's or our clients' data at risk," she writes, "and allowing technology silos within the company would only add an additional layer of complexity and cost."

It is easy to see why the marketing department wants to make its own decisions regarding its IT (just as it is easy to see why PR, HR, finance and sales would want the same). It is also easy, however, to envision the day when these experts in their own fields say, wait a minute, we need to get back to focusing on what we do best and leave the technology to those who do IT best. - Caron