Bridging the Gap: How CMOs and CIOs Can Align to Drive Organizational Growth

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

However, when it comes to partnering with the CIO, one executive role is experiencing a significant disadvantage: CMOs. According to new insights shared by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and the Institute for Real Growth (IRG), less than half (46%) of chief marketing officers reported having an effective collaboration with their CIO counterparts. In fact, CMO-CIO engagement was ranked the lowest overall compared to relationships with other C-Suite executives.

“The Future of Growth: Unlocking the CMO-CIO Partnership” report highlights how this disconnect can have a significant impact on businesses since CMOs oversee systems that directly engage with the customer and a company’s growth and revenue goals. Without a close partnership with CIOs, not only are CMOs failing to capitalize on martech and other technologies, they are also missing out on the opportunity to align on critical business goals such as data-led decision making and increased customer engagement.

Challenges with CMO-CIO collaboration are typically rooted in a lack of mutual understanding, lack of consistent and frequent communication, and misaligned goals and objectives, according to the report. These issues can have real-world consequences in hindering organizational growth – potentially resulting in missed opportunities for value creation, 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 five elements of “humanized growth” uncovered by the study, including to:

  • Ground—aligning IT and marketing roles
  • Reimagine—creating a future-backward vision for marketing and technology
  • Focus—embracing joint KPIs and a holistic martech strategy
  • Organize—creating balanced, whole-brained teams where creativity and analytics are equally valued
  • Unleash—focusing on the importance of personal leadership and taking ownership of partnership success

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

Achieving human-first understanding when goal-setting

CMOs and CIOs can achieve human-first understanding by starting with a detailed description of each role that goes beyond defining traditional responsibilities to create a shared agenda with shared objectives and joint 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 mutual alignment on those specific goals.

Further, businesses can assess marketing and IT capabilities to identify skills gaps and resource limitations. Once identified, they can jointly develop a plan to address these gaps through training, upskilling, and working with external partners.

Creating a structured plan for ongoing cross-functional learning and knowledge sharing, such as attending each other’s industry conferences, internal training sessions, and shadowing teams can allow these roles to gain firsthand understanding. Embracing a “give 60%, take 40%” mindset fosters human empathy and emphasizes mutual investment.

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Creating a joint 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 could work together to reach that future. And this vision shouldn’t only be shared internally;

CMOs and CIOs should aim to evangelize it externally to gain stakeholder buy-in and create excitement.

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

Integrating finances and performance indicators to drive change

CMOs and CIOs should differentiate between incremental improvements (adaptive changes) and major shifts (transformative changes). By focusing joint resources on transformative initiatives, organizations can significantly impact their business, according to the study findings.

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

Breaking down barriers in work and recruitment

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

Cultivating an open, transparent, and collaborative work environment that encourages frequent communication, informal meetings, and knowledge-sharing initiatives can build stronger interdepartmental understanding. Involving both the CMO and CIO in an organization’s key recruitment decisions can ensure that new hires possess the necessary skills and collaborative capabilities to operate effectively.

Promote a culture of collaboration and strong communication

CMOs and CIOs should actively model the desired collaborative behaviors at a company. This can include publicly endorsing each other’s initiatives, celebrating each other’s achievements as well as the progress on joint benchmarks. As in many things, culture is key. Establishing a culture of open feedback and continuous improvement between the two executives and their functions, including regularly soliciting input from teams, stakeholders, and customers to adapt strategies and initiatives, can allow for growth and better communication.

To maintain the desired culture and course-correct when needed, businesses can regularly assess the level of interdependence within a team, with the goal of achieving a balance between independence and dependence on each other.

A strong CMO-CIO relationship is essential for driving sustainable, stakeholder-focused growth. By focusing on these five key drivers of humanized growth – organizations can foster a collaborative, high-performing partnership within these two functions. The potential rewards go beyond that of enhanced customer experience and improved operational efficiencies—this tighter alignment also fosters greater collaboration among the larger C-suite, better business outcomes, and a more unified vision for the organization.

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Picture of Kamal Bhadada

Kamal Bhadada

Kamal Bhadada, is President, TCS Interactive

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