Pre-Pandemic, What Did Marketing and IT Think About the Future of the CMO and CIO?

December 4, 2020

Infosys Marketing CIO View CMO Role Evolution Nov2020Half (51%) of IT executives think that the CMO role could be replaced with another role in the next 2 years, according to a recent report [download page] from Infosys. In the pre-pandemic survey of 750 senior-level executives fielded in early 2020, respondents in both marketing and IT were asked to share their views on the CMO and CIO roles.

The Future of the CMO and CIO

In terms of how the CMO role will evolve in the next 2 years, marketing and IT respondents were in agreement that the top way the role will develop will be by supporting sales via website and sales collateral, as well as managing creative solutions  (marketing: 62%; IT: 75%). However, IT respondents were more convinced than those in marketing that the CMO role will increasingly involve leading the customer and new product development (marketing: 53%; IT: 60%).

And, the two respondents groups differed in their estimation of the third way that the CMO role would evolve. Where half (51%) of IT respondents thought that the CMO will be replaced by another (e.g Chief Growth Officer), marketing respondents thought the role would evolve to be the visionary who comes up with the next big idea (54%).

When it comes to the CIO role and how it will develop, marketing and IT were more closely aligned on the top 3 ways this evolution will manifest. The largest share of both groups (marketing: 71%; IT: 64%) thought that the role will evolve alongside the task of leveraging technology know-how, with 50% of both groups thinking that setting the vision and partnering with the CMO toward this vision is how the role could change.

That said, IT respondents were more convinced that the CIO role will progress to formulating customer-facing solutions, global opportunities and new revenue lines (marketing: 33%; IT: 42%).

Top Business Objectives

Differences between marketing and IT teams also showed up in the survey’s exploration of top business objectives behind digital marketing initiatives.

Looking at the objective that the largest share of both groups placed in the top 5, marketing and IT respondents agreed that improved customer experience was a key objective (marketing: 54%; IT: 46%). However, from this point, gaps in perception begin to emerge. While the next largest portion of marketing respondents (50%) placed seamless customer engagement across multiple channels in their top 5, only half as many (23%) IT respondents did the same.

And, while for IT respondents transformed business culture (46%) and increased operational efficiency (42%) were top objectives of a digital marketing strategy, fewer marketing respondents felt the same (31% each).

In the same report, Infosys established that there are various barriers to collaboration between marketing and IT teams, but that there were plenty of opportunities for common ground.

Read the full report here.

About the Data: Findings are based on a survey of 220 Marketing (42% share) and IT (58%) leaders, all of whom are from companies with at least $500 million in revenues. The survey was fielded in April 2020.

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