Chief Marketing Officers are the new corporate executive stars today and boy are they frustrated with their Information Technologies (IT) departments. Companies that are lucky enough to have a tech savvy CMO with a passion to use and employ digital marketing tools correctly can easily beat their competition on all sales and marketing fronts if their IT does not inhibit them.

The “cloud” has taken the power away from the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and delivered it on a silver platter to the CMO. First it was Customer Relationship (CRM) software lead by firms like Saleforce that gave them an edge, and now it marketing automation from folks like Marketo, Pardot, and Silverpop. Taking it a step further we are also seeing mobile customer service applications and new marketing customer advocacy software that have enabled companies like Aquia to grow 84,100%  to $70MM in just five years. These are not just powerful marketing tools, but literally financial weapons when placed in the right hands. These digital marketing tools, when implemented correctly, can significantly grow a company’s profits and increase its value.

As technology continues to evolve, the winners are those that can successfully embrace it and the successful CMOs know that.

But what’s lacking?

The majority of marketing directors and officers are pulling their hair out because they cannot get their IT departments to keep pace. Even worse are the poor souls whose legacy IT departments are in an insulated silo that has reported to finance or operations for over a decade.  ERP systems were the IT glory days in the 90s followed by supply chain optimization in the 2000s, and now it’s marketing’s turn. But, finance and most operations executives are generally not hired to be thought leaders in the innovation and/or product-development areas; so the real question is “Why should IT report to either of them?” Unfortunately the IT bureaucratic chain of command is often left over from the past and in many cases today it is horribly out of sync with the company’s current needs.

To make matters worse, the IT department itself frequently has no expertise in the new technologies. Just last year we pitched a mobile app to a fortune 1000 company  with a 700 person IT staff without a single mobile expert within their staff or on contract. Today the case for outsourcing IT development is the strongest it has ever been. Specialty digital marketing tools and the knowledge needed to integrate them with legacy systems are just not many company’s core expertise. All of the stars have aligned against the CIO who tries to do it all internally.  Technology is moving too fast. Why pay a $100k salary for an average IT employee, when a team of experts can deliver the right stuff for half that in half the time?

More and more we are hearing CMOs state that they had to circumvent the IT department because, “They are all worthless.” Given the dynamics just outlined, it is frequently a valid statement.  On the flip side there are three alternatives some companies should consider:

1  Let CMOs have their own IT staff

2  Let CMOs outsource what they need done

3  Have the CIO report to the CMO

If the company is truly a marketing driven company, then the last point may make a lot of sense. Technology is no longer just an operational concern within a business but is an essential component of every discipline. To achieve high performance teamwork in any company requires the optimal business tools and the optimal reporting relationships.