CIO CMO Partnership - The Modernized Technology Selection Process

One of the best places a CIO and CMO to collaborate is when selecting new technologies and capabilities. As I showed in my last post, 5 Tips On Starting a Killer CIO - CMO Relationship, developing proof of concepts and pilots around new vendor technologies is an important area for partnership - Marketing owns the business driver and often the funding, while IT typically has the process and skills to vet out vendor capabilities.

The process of technology selection in today's competitive world is a little different than the enterprise software selection process many IT departments understand. Put simply, the process has to be much shorter and bolder in order to meet the Marketing department's challenging goals and time lines. Often, the vendors under review are selling SaaS products that have targeted functionality versus the more broader enterprise software, so the selection and review process should reflect this paradigm.

Enterprise vs. Modern Technology Selection


The diagram above depicts how a shorter timeline can be accomplished. With enterprise software, vendor selection, POC, and Pilot phases are implemented sequentially. Since enterprise software is often a larger investment and introduces broad capabilities across a large number of people, the vendor selection process is usually detailed out to help differentiate capabilities, risks, legal, financial, and technical criteria between different vendor offerings.

In what I call a "Modernized Technology Selection", vendor selection is done with a bit of up front due diligence, but many tasks are accomplished while POCs and even during Pilots are in progress. Business users desire to get to POCs and Pilots quickly because they help flush out how the technology works and whether it will deliver desired capabilities. They expect vendor selection disciplines such as financial reviews, security details, technical assessments, and price negotiations to occur in parallel and staged based on the successful progress of the POC and Pilot. (See one of my older posts on Evaluating SaaS Vendors.)

Why the CIO and CMO Should Partner


Here's another view - IT better keep up. Marketing and other departments have sufficient skills to do some POC and Pilot work independently and without IT especially for SaaS products that don't need significant process or data integrations. So if IT isn't there as a partner, the selection is likely to happen without them.

But my suggestion to Marketing is, don't let this happen. The devil is in the details and technologists can help explain the boundaries of a software capability (what it can and cannot do). They can ask questions that might help introduce new and other options including options that may already exist in house. Finally, it is far more likely that some form of integration is needed, and technologists can help flush out these implementation details.

Partner?

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5 Tips On Starting a Killer CIO - CMO Relationship

2014 Marketing Technology Landscape by chiefmartec.com
2014/Jan Marketing Technology Landscape
I love infographics that categorize the capabilities from various software and SaaS companies and depict their logos in the appropriate quadrant. The Marketing Technology Landscape pictured here is all encompassing and includes technologies specific to marketing like SEO and email marketing as well as others that are more technical such as Big Data and Cloud and yet others that have broader applications across the enterprise.

What CIOs and technologists should know is that the sales people from these software firms are targeting CMOs and marketers. The marketers are the users and often the buyers for these technologies while IT is perceived at best a collaborator and often a barrier to these sales and implementations.

But this picture depicts exactly why the CMO - CIO relationship is so important. Buried in every one of these capabilities is a vendor selection exercise that should have business, financial, and technical criteria. More often than not, the selection should include a Proof of Concept (POC) that demonstrates core business needs but also stresses product capability, boundaries, and volumes. In simple terms, does the software do what the sales person says it does, is it easy to implement, and does it have the configurations needed for a successful implementation? (Note, See my older post on top attributes of agile platforms.) More often than not, these capabilities don't operate in isolation and require some form of coordinated work flow and data flow. They may also requires some solutioning because vendor capabilities often overlap, and developing a business process needs to consider what capabilities to leverage from each provider. Finally many SaaS vendors are startups that have to prove out their financial viability and operations, so monitoring the performance of strategic SaaS partners is an important discipline.

Bottom line - The CMO is under pressure to perform and provide both short term and strategic results. They will move ahead without help from IT or other departments if they must but more often than not, would prefer to partner with the CIO if they can provide timely and valuable services.

What can the CIO and CMO do to establish a partnership?


  • Understand goals and drivers - CMOs have to provide leads to sales, improve brand perception, demonstrate revenue from new market segments, and prove a ROI on marketing investments. Strong CIOs like to see reuse out of platforms, prefer automation when integrating solutions, want to move closer to master data models especially around customer data, and must insure that vendors, applications, and data have appropriate security measures. These are not opposing drivers, but it does require some walking in each others shoes to determine how to collaborate and innovate together.

  • Partner on proof of concepts and pilots - There is some common ground between CMOs and CIOs when new solutions are reviewed and selected. Both understand there is an element of risk in the selection and plenty of learning to determine how to align capabilities with business needs. POCs and pilot projects are optimal times to establish cross disciplinary teams and for CIOs and CMOs to work together to define success criteria.

  • Recognize training needs - Marketers are working with more data driven analytical tools. Technologists are still learning how to provide "quick" solutions to marketing challenges while still maintaining data and architecture standards. The CIO and CMO have responsibilities to align their organizations and establishing joint training programs is an important investment in developing skills and culture.

  • Review KPIs rigorously - Marketing needs and technology capabilities are changing rapidly. Establishing Key Performance Indicators is important to align the organization, but they must be updated frequently to adjust for successes, failures, and industry changes. 

  • Align to a big data strategy - The most significant strategic investment the CIO and CMO can work on collaboratively is how to best capture, analyze, and leverage data to gain new business. CIOs and CMOs should develop a data management practice that improves quality, provides targeted analytics, and demonstrates both revenue and operational improvements
Next post will cover POCs and Pilots.





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What is the Internet Of Things? The Magic Beyond Bracelets, Gadgets and Home Automation

The potential benefits from technologies associated with the Internet of Things (IOT) lies in the intersection of multiple capabilities. IOT's magic goes beyond just a simple application. Take wearable technologies - does the Nike Fuelband or the Fitbit represent our IOT aspirations? Home automation has been around for at least twenty years, so is scheduling the lights to turn on or off or a more programmable thermostat really IOT?

I recently tweeted

to suggest that IOT is becoming confusing because many applications that connect sensors to the internet are being included. Is that what we want?

I suggest no. The key word I home in on is "Things" - plural - so a single wearable or home with some level of data capture and intelligence is no more than several sensors, a cpu, and software.

IOT's Magic


The magic and innovation begins when we equate Internet in IOT with Intelligence and focus on multiple things - so IOT starts with
  • Many low cost sensors - Not just one or a few - hundred, thousands, millions++.
  • Big Data analytics - To process the raw and historical data from the sensors.
  • Feedback systems - So once intelligence is gathered, machines and people can act on it. Feedback systems can include algorithms that make changes, displays that alert people, or controllers that adjust physical systems.
  • Multiple automatons acting independantly and collaboratively - So not just one person with a fitbit, or one home that's automated.
The real magic is in these multiple automatons. For example, the 10th floor of my building probably has heating, fire, and lighting control systems on the floor. "Local intelligence" would be if the system sensed its occupants and recognized daily patterns to optimize lighting and heating of the floor. The building should sense this across all its floors and have better control the HVAC system based on demand, or better inform emergency personnel if a fire alarm is pulled. Regional orchestration is when information from neighboring buildings is shared between them and also with more centralized citywide systems.

This layering of intelligence and action requires architecture and planning. What information is shared? What scenarios are planned and programmed? How are displays configured to best drill into patterns and outliers? How should we develop these systems so that they are both simple, but also effective at improving life?

That is IOT.


 
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About Isaac Sacolick

Isaac Sacolick is President of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and other digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO, a digital transformation influencer, and has over 900 articles published at InfoWorld, CIO.com, his blog Social, Agile, and Transformation, and other sites. You can find him sharing new insights @NYIke on Twitter, his Driving Digital Standup YouTube channel, or during the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers.