How CMOs and CIOs Can Align to Drive Organizational Growth

For decades, C-suite executives, including CFOs and COOs, have been working closely with their respective CIOs to use technology to support their agendas of digitizing supply chains, accounting systems and payroll. The digitization of the C-suite has helped translate business challenges into solvable problems, and the adoption of artificial intelligence will only strengthen this collective collaboration for better business outcomes.

But when it comes to partnering with the CIO, one executive role is experiencing a significant disadvantage: the CMO. According to new findings shared by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and the Institute for Real Growth (IRG), less than half (46%) of CMOs say they collaborate effectively with their CIO counterparts. In fact, CMO-CIO engagement was lowest overall compared to relationships with other C-Suite executives.

“The Future of Growth: Unleashing the CMO-CIO Partnership” The report highlights that this disconnect can have a significant impact on businesses as CMOs oversee systems that interact directly with customers and the company’s growth and revenue goals. Without a close partnership with the CIO, CMOs not only fail to capitalize on marts and other technologies, but also miss the opportunity to align with critical business goals such as data-driven decision making and greater customer engagement.

The challenges associated with collaboration between CMOs and CIOs are typically rooted in a lack of mutual understanding, a lack of consistent and frequent communication, and a misalignment of goals and objectives, according to the report. These issues can have real-world consequences that hinder an organization’s growth—resulting in missed opportunities to create value, inefficient resource allocation, and slowed digital transformation.

The good news is that the gap between CMOs and CIOs can be bridged.

To achieve a high-performing CMO-CIO relationship, organizations should embrace the five elements of “humanized growth” the study revealed, including:

• Country— alignment of IT and marketing roles
• Imagine again—creating a future vision for marketing and technology
• Concentrate—including common KPIs and a holistic martech strategy
• Organize—creating balanced, whole-brain teams where creativity and analytics are equally valued
• Unleash—focusing on the importance of personal leadership and taking responsibility for the success of the partnership

By focusing on these key factors, CMOs and CIOs can break down silos, improve collaboration and achieve greater overall business success.

Achieving human understanding in goal setting

CMOs and CIOs can achieve human understanding by starting with a detailed description of each role that goes beyond defining traditional responsibilities and creating a shared agenda with shared goals and shared ownership of how marketing and IT contribute to overall business priorities. This should also include establishing a clear process for working with external agencies and providers to ensure these specific objectives are aligned.

Businesses can further assess marketing and IT capabilities and identify skills gaps and resource constraints. Once identified, they can jointly develop a plan to address these gaps through training, upskilling and collaboration with external partners.

Creating a structured plan for ongoing cross-functional learning and knowledge sharing, such as mutual participation in industry conferences, internal training and shadow teams, can allow these roles to gain first-hand understanding. Adopting a “60% give, 40% take” mindset fosters human empathy and emphasizes mutual investment.

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Creating a common long-term vision for the future

Instead of starting with current capabilities, businesses can begin by defining their ideal future state. This collaborative process should involve both CMOs and CIOs to visualize how marketing and technology can work together to achieve this future. And this vision should not only be shared internally;

CMOs and CIOs should strive to evangelize it externally to gain stakeholder interest and generate excitement.

Rather than attempting a massive all-in-one mart implementation, organizations can take a targeted approach, starting with small, high-value projects and using short-term, data-driven feedback loops to adapt and improve.

Integrating financial and performance indicators for change

CMOs and CIOs should distinguish between incremental improvements (adaptive changes) and large shifts (transformational changes). By focusing shared resources on transformational initiatives, organizations can significantly impact their business, the study found.

Organizations can create a single, integrated budget that includes both marketing and technology priorities. This type of collaborative budgeting can build shared accountability and better alignment with financial priorities.

Developing a common set of key performance indicators (KPIs) that track both marketing and technology outcomes can reflect the shared vision of these executive roles and facilitate ongoing evaluation and course correction.

Removing barriers to work and recruitment

Organizations can create cross-functional teams that include members from both marketing and IT, which can break down traditional departmental silos.

Cultivating an open, transparent, and collaborative work environment that encourages frequent communication, informal meetings, and knowledge-sharing initiatives can build stronger understanding between departments. Involving both the CMO and the CIO in the organization’s key hiring decisions can ensure that new hires have the necessary skills and collaboration skills to function effectively.

Foster a culture of collaboration and strong communication

CMOs and CIOs should actively model the desired collaborative behaviors within the company. This can include public endorsement of mutual initiatives, mutual celebration of achievements and progress on common standards. As with many things, culture is key. Establishing a culture of open feedback and continuous improvement between the two executives and their functions, including regular input from teams, stakeholders and customers to adjust strategies and initiatives, can enable growth and better communication.

To maintain the desired culture and the right course when needed, businesses can regularly evaluate the level of interdependence within the team to achieve a balance between independence and interdependence.

A strong relationship between the CMO and the CIO is essential to fostering sustainable, stakeholder-focused growth. By focusing on these five key drivers of humanized growth, organizations across these two functions can foster collaboration and high-performance partnerships. The potential rewards go beyond a better customer experience and improved operational efficiency—this closer alignment also fosters better collaboration between larger C-suites, better business results, and a more unified organizational vision.

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