Marketing vs. IT

Technologies advancing at a speed we can’t keep up, before Marketing teams demanded and directed Information Technology (IT) teams to search for new solutions to support their strategies, today we have a different scenario, where numerous tools are present to not only to support but to automate marketing decisions.

Big Data, CRM, Artificial Intelligence, Automation, Algorithms, Internet of Things, Chat Bots, Social Media, Virtual Reality, Sensors, Applications and more Applications and an infinite number of technological solutions, to what extent are teams ready to understand and use the full potential of these tools?

Strategic decisions and results are still affected due to the distance/gap between Marketing and IT, as a consequence we have the waste of investments, resources, time and also the unplanned/disordered growth of systems and data without any type of standardization, leading to under use of these systems by the teams and, therefore, incoherent decisions without any solid foundation and clear direction.

In order to achieve better and faster results, Marketing and IT Teams must work together and with total synergy, defining clear and common objectives, with total balance between strategic business needs and available technologies and forthcoming ones. Each team must complement its existence by decentralizing information among itself and creating a common language that will be the result of constant training and capacitation, thus avoiding unknown themes and vocabularies during the communication process or strategic definition.

Consumers are the main agents of change, as in Darwin’s Theory, teams need to be in constant adaptation and evolution in order to obtain the best results, if one shows an aversion towards change, its surroundings will be affected, and finally putting at risk the whole consumer satisfaction during brand experience.

Art: Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol, Untitled (Two Dogs), acrylic and silkscreen ink on canvas, 1984.