Who Should Hold the Purse Strings for Martech Tools?

Gartner analyst Laura McLellan famously predicted that by 2017, CMOs will spend more on technology than CIOs. So, which team should be in charge of buying marketing-technology tools: marketing or IT? That can be a divisive question. Between 2015 and 2020, marketing was indeed calling the shots, selecting and buying the tools that best suit them. Or, at the very least, it would run its choices through IT for vetting and final procurement.

That process, which sealed marketing’s independence and forged a meaningful collaboration between the two teams, worked well.

However, the popularity of modern digital-experience technology—specifically that powered by a shift away from all-in-one platforms back to best of breed solutions —coupled with budgetary constraints and microtrends has shifted control to IT.

IT Is Back in Control

As observed by Ryan Donovan, CTO of Grin.co, an influencer marketing-software company, budgets being under scrutiny across all industries nowadays is placing IT in a “gatekeeping role” of all technologies, including martech. “The days of signing up with a corporate card are over,” he added.

Considering that an embattled economy is pressuring all companies, especially those in technology, that switch seems fair. As highlighted in Deloitte’s 2023 Technology Industry Outlook, a key challenge facing the technology sector is that a rise in softened consumer spending is imposing an urgent need on tech companies’ C-suites to grow revenues and margins, causing layoffs and more reliance on automation. Macrotrends like that can affect the answer to the question of who should own digital experiences and the decisions on purchasing the related tools.

Recall that, during the early internet days of simple content and experiences, marketing handled martech tools with confidence. Now, as digital marketing expands, innovates, and becomes much more technical, IT feels the need to grab the purchasing reins.

The crux of this argument lies in the differing interests of IT and marketing professionals vis-à-vis headless versus monolithic platforms. In mid-2020, Gartner issued a report encouraging e-commerce businesses to embrace composable platforms, igniting a widespread discussion. Best of need, composable tools, with their decoupled, headless capabilities, cater more to the preferences of IT experts in creating contemporary web, mobile, and omnichannel experiences, inadvertently leaving marketers at a disadvantage as they struggle to acquire and integrate the plug-and-play tools they desire.

In contrast, all-in-one, monolithic platforms, which boasts only one vendor and one suite of products, is an easy, one-stop-shop purchase. Bent on building more modern experiences, however, IT clamors to be in the driving seat of buying headless tools because—

• Developers have the technical expertise for integrating those tools seamlessly with existing systems.
• IT can ensure that the tools they select are compatible and cost effective.

What’s more, by taking control, IT can impart guardrails around what to buy, arguing that  marketing has bought too many black-box tools that haven’t worked out and that must be replaced. Kate Bradley Chernis, CEO of Social Media AI vendor Lately.ai, agreed, observing that marketers buying technology can often make things too subjective and personal. For sophisticated tools, they tend to overwhelm stakeholders with complicated analytics. IT buyers, conversely, are better equipped to solicit broader support for purchases [based on] business value and financial justifications.

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Marketers Are Frustrated

On the other side of the purchasing debate is marketing, which is seemingly losing the say for picking and adopting martech tools. Not to mention that companies with a composable architecture might also be limiting the work marketers can do on the platform.

Naturally, marketers desire to be influential and feel frustrated if IT makes purchases without marketing input, leading to siloed working conditions. The friction intensifies if marketers find themselves having to rely on developers to perform certain tasks, which could delay experiences going live if the techies are bogged down by other priorities.

To give marketers more weight in today’s composable landscape, digital-experience platforms are available through which they can work independently from dashboards instead of through developers—a best-of-both-worlds situation that better unites and connects marketing and IT.

IT and Marketing Must Work Together

Ultimately, since both IT and marketing have valid grounds on why they should manage purchase decisions for martech, both teams must work together seamlessly and communicate frequently—no matter which of them gets to hold the purse strings. Without a doubt, only by collaborating cooperatively and transparently can the teams generate and deliver first-rate experiences and lift revenue.

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