Marketing and Information Technology Do Go Together

The IT Team has always had an identity crisis in corporate America.   Does the IT Organization at your company report up to the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Medical Officer, the COO, the CEO or even Human Resources?    Over the course of my IT career, I have been in IT Organizations that reported to all of the above.  OK, maybe not Human Resources.  

The most common report structure today is that IT reports to the Chief Financial Officer.   It is unfortunately antiquated thinking, since IT would be looked at as a cost center and the finance executive is always focusing on how to control their company's technology costs.    Computers, introverted high-priced techies and applications cost money, they think.   There is no innovation in this structure and the most common project is to cut costs by going through vendor contracts and conducting telecomm audits, to do what?  Save money.  From a people perspective, CFOs are always looking at how to reduce the cost of labor by outsourcing IT to Managed Services companies and even some outsource IT to services firms with operations overseas.

I view the COO, a lesser evil of the CFO, for the IT group to report to.  Money is still an issue, but instead process is more of a focus of the COO.  Process is a great thing.  I love process.  Technology is all about streamlining workflows and the way business is run.  I am currently at a firm that uses LEAN Management to help eliminate process "waste".   Believe me, there is a lot of waste in IT organizations today.   The mindset of the COO with process is a great thing, but again where is the innovation?  How is the IT group generating revenue for the bottom line?  Process only saves money.  Process can generate money if efficient technology is involved.

I will not discuss IT reporting to the Chief Medical Officer or Human Resources, since if there is a company that has that organization in place, they are not worth mentioning.  What does a doctor or human resources executive know about technology?

Ok, now how about the IT team reporting to the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer)?   Marketing is all about how to prospect and engage potential business.    Marketing executives have to innovate and set their product or service apart from their competition.  Every firm has competition, whether it is a retailer, a hospital group, a lighting company or a high technology company.   Marketing executives focus on how to generate revenue and know they need technology to set themselves apart from their competition.  They need to have a better website, an engaging social media strategy, a more efficient CRM to maintain customer relationships.    Think about this, a website, a CRM, mobile applications.  Doesn't the IT team build and maintain them?  In this organizational structure, IT has become an innovation center instead of a cost center.    With all of the freeware, opensource and services like cloud computing, SaaS etc, the cost is not a factor anymore, if done correctly.   Marketing and IT do in fact work together like bread and butter.  

So, if you are looking at your next IT opportunity, consider how the organization structure is at the company.  It can go a long way to determine how innovative the IT organization can be.   If you are a techie, don't think about servers, instead think about services that help market a product or service.  It is where we are going into the 2015, since we are in a social marketing world.