Saying Good-by to CIOs, Hello CMO!

Business structure is changing. Priorities today demand a new way of thinking about business, operations, marketing, and communication as a whole.

I was reading the Accenture report, "The CMO-CIO Disconnect: Bridging the Gap to Seize the Digital Opportunity" (http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/accenture-report-how-cmos-and-cios-can-play-nice-together-022230.php.) According to this report, by 2017 CMOs will spend more time with technology and analytics than CIOs. This trend has been working its way through the media for a few years now and I have written about it before.

As our technology dependence continues to grow, so does our ability to be available 24/7; we are given access to people who were previously unavailable; new marketing opportunities, and an increase in the number of ways and how we communicate with others. While this may sound simply...like changes in one's personal life, it drastically affects the business world as well.

"What can be measured can be managed" was the old way of thinking. Since not everything in marketing can be easily tracked or measured to show definitive ROI, a perception that marketing wasn't as important as other areas of the business sprang up. Marketing was sometimes perceived as a necessary evil!

The good news for marketers is that it is becoming easier to track and predict the effects of marketing than previously possible. The “what can be measured can be managed” maxim can now be applied to marketing almost as thoroughly as other more established business processes. This change is causing a cultural shift in how businesses operate. Marketing is becoming the core of how businesses need to think and act and that is driving changes in operations, finance, technology, information, and management instead of a necessary evil!