The CMO and CIO relationship discussion has been raging for months, and there is a growing perspective that IT budget ownership will shift from IT to the business. Add to this the growing list of new executive roles, and the role of CIO could look very different in the near future. I recently participated in a panel discussion on this topic at a CIO Summit attended by over 40 CIOs. I was somewhat surprised by several of the answers provided by the CIO panel, as well as those provided to poll questions posed during the session. It would indicate that those raging discussions about IT and business integration are unfounded. I thought I’d get a different perspective from someone with one of those new executive titles, so I interviewed Heidi Schwende, a Chief Digital Officer with WSI World. The following are her thoughts on similar questions.
CMO
The Ultimate Power Duo – The CMO and CIO
The New Jersey CIO Executive Summit produced by Evanta was held on December 5th in Whippany New Jersey. I had the pleasure of moderating the lunchtime keynote – a panel discussion titled “The Ultimate Power Duo – The CMO/CIO Partnership”. Joining me on stage were two CMO-CIO teams:
Hovnanian Enterprises, Inc:
CIO – Nicholas Colisto,
VP Corporate Marketing and Sales – Laura VanVelthoven
Panasonic:
CIO – Gabrielle Wolfson,
VP Marketing – Betty Noonan
Bloggers, Industry analysts, and Surveys are fueling the CMO-CIO partnership discussion and delivering some very bold predictions:
- Fully 60 percent of marketers point to their lack of alignment with the company’s IT department as the biggest obstacle to reaching the consumer
- Gartner says ninety percent of technology spending will be outside of the IT budget by the end of the decade. In contrast, only 20 percent of technology spend was outside of IT as recently as 2000
- In 2013, global technology spending is expected to reach $3.7 trillion, according to Gartner – and IT spending is being spread more widely than ever across the business
- Gartner Research predicts the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO by 2017
- A recent IBM Survey shows that leading Marketers are extending their role beyond Marketing
Reimagining the Future 