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Through a comprehensive CMO-CIO Alignment Audit and series of qualitative dialogues with marketing and IT executives from Fortune 500 companies this campaign will take a deep dive into the issues, obstacles and disconnects between the two groups, need for tighter alignment with strategic corporate objectives, barriers to better collaboration and communication, as well as roadmaps and IT models for furthering empowering and enabling the marketing process.

Complementing the CMO-CIO initiative will be parallel programs already attracting significant attention on defining global operational marketing models, improving marketing supply chain management, growing individualized relationship marketing (IRM) practices, implementing better customer voice and advocacy campaigns, and optimization of the delivery of an optimized customer experience through infrastructure technology, solution deployment and hosted platform investments.

The CMO-CIO Alignment Imperative will seek to involve a coalition of market access partners and communications channels. These include the CMO Council and The Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network organizational affiliates (vertical, horizontal and geographical), CXO Media Group (CIO/CSO Channels), and online communities reaching marketers and technology professionals.

FACTS & STATS

Consumers’ Expectations Are Intensifying---But Most Companies Are Not Meeting Their Needs

• According to the Accenture 2009 Global Consumer Satisfaction Report, customer expectations are increasing, but companies seem to be falling short, despite the improved perception of service quality.  45% of consumers have higher or much higher expectations of customer service than just 12 months ago.
• Only 3% of customers feel their expectations are always being met. 35% say that companies frequently meet their expectations---leaving 62% of consumers sometimes, rarely, or never satisfied.
• When a negative experience occurs, the vast majority of consumers share these unfortunate experiences with others, including broadcasting them on online channels. 89% have told people around them about the experience (e.g., friends, family, coworkers), and 25% have posted negative comments about the experience (e.g., blogs, Facebook).
• Even more, this Accenture study showed that over the past 12 months, two of every three consumers (69%) switched providers due to poor customer service and/or their needs not being met.

CMO Priorities + Mandates Are IT-Driven:

• The CMO Council’s Annual Marketing Outlook study for 2010 finds that many top priorities and plans for 2010 will benefit from tighter, closer IT collaboration. For example:
• Improving customer segmentation and targeting, along with investing in digital demand generation and online relationship building, are seen as the top two ways to maximize the impact and value of marketing in 2010
• A digital marketing makeover -- involving platforms, programs and people -- is the most important transformational initiative aimed at advancing marketing effectiveness in 2010
• Internet influence and voice was second only to the recovering economy as among the top 2010 issues and challenges for 39 percent of responding marketers
• Customer retention and monetization was the second most important area of business need and opportunity for marketing spend allocation
• Improving operational visibility, control and accountability of spend was seen as keen to marketing operational efficiency gains in 2010
• An industry specific research initiative by the CMO Council in the global communications services sector – dubbed Service Invention to Increase Retention – gave IT pretty low marks in addressing customer interface, service and support:
• More than half of survey participants said their company’s effectiveness in responding to pain needed improvement or was not very good. And all but 11 percent believe they need to get better at customer handling and response.
• Unfortunately, over 50 percent of marketers feel their organization is not culturally or organizationally aligned around the customer. And business practices, billing policies, and personnel are not “customer friendly.”
• Over 35 percent of marketers see deficiencies in IT, back office, or operational systems that subvert marketing claims and fail to meet customer demands and expectations. This, despite the fact that over 60 percent of industry marketers say they provide strategic direction for systems investments and 73 percent expect back office systems to enable faster, more effective control and implementation of marketing of strategies.
• Misalignments between marketing and IT stand in the way of gathering and analyzing customer information, optimizing go-to-market strategies and new product launches, as well as improving customer acquisition and relationship management programs.
• The most common complaints and roadblocks in integrating disparate customer repositories are inadequate or incompatible IT systems or databases, as well as information siloed in different functional areas.
• Underscoring the need for a more disciplined, coordinated and unified marketing supply chain driven by IT are key findings from the CMO Council’s Define Where to Streamline study:
• Only 25.2 percent of marketers have undertaken a comprehensive audit and analysis of costs and process efficiencies in their supply chain and only 25.9 percent track obsolescence of marketing and event management consumables
• Just 13.0 percent of marketers rated their supplier resources extremely well integrated and globally aligned
• Only 11.5 percent of marketers report handling the global coordination of marketing services with a robust marketing operations platform that optimizes resources and processes
• 35.3 percent of marketers said their organizations utilized multiple sourcing systems and platforms used by different functions.
• Just 10.8 percent of marketers are implementing new collaboration and workflow systems to reduce costs and inefficiency in their marketing supply chain
• 40.7 percent of marketers blamed functional silos and resistance to operational marketing process as the greatest obstacle to marketing supply chain effectiveness
• 32.5 believed established vendor and supplier relationships and loyalties were a significant contributor to supply chain cost and ineffectiveness

Digital Marketing Trends Make IT a Natural Marketing Partner:

• According to the comScore 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review Report, consumer use of digital media climbed to new heights in 2009 as the Internet continued to evolve as an integral component of personal and professional life.
• The report provides a comprehensive view across the fixed and mobile digital sectors to uncover this past year’s important consumer trends. Key findings highlighted in the report include:
• The U.S. core search market grew 16 percent in 2009, driven by a 6-percent gain in unique searchers and a 10-percent gain in search queries per searcher.
• Social networking continued to gain momentum in 2009 with nearly 4 out of 5 Internet users visiting a social networking site on a monthly basis and Facebook and Twitter propelling much of the growth in the category.
• Display ad impressions grew 21 percent in 2009 as the online advertising sector increased its share of media spending. Growth was driven by an 8-percent increase in ad reach and a 12-percent increase in average frequency.
• Total (retail and travel) U.S. e-commerce spending reached $209.6 billion in 2009, down 2 percent versus the previous year and the first year on record with negative growth rates. Nonetheless, e-commerce retail spending continued to increase its share of consumer spending in a challenging economic environment.
• Six out of seven U.S. Internet users now view online video content in a month, with YouTube and Hulu continuing to experience rapid increase in viewership.
• In the past year, the mobile industry witnessed smartphone ownership increase from 11 percent to 17 percent of mobile users, while 3G phone ownership increased from 32 percent to 43 percent.
• A March 2010 Accenture Marketing Executive Survey of 400 CMOs and senior marketing executives showed that while 45% said they need to master digital channels to engage customers and create value, 34% admitted they experience significant barriers that prevent them from doing so. 
• Additionally, 26% of CMOs acknowledged that they were either below average or the weakest in their industry on this front.

CIOs Have a Mandate to Better Align With Business Units — But It’s Not Happening

• This same Accenture Marketing Executive Survey showed that while 74% of CMOs saw the need to master the development of long-lasting customer relations, 40% meet significant challenges in building them—most often due to inefficient business practices
• The study revealed that while 72% of CMOs believe they need to better integrate with the business and product lines, aligning with the CIO and CEO were ranked at the very bottom of business units they felt they should be working more closely with. 
• 52% of CMOs said they didn’t need to better align with their CIO/IT organization—and 53% didn’t feel they needed to better align with the CEO and Board.
• While aligning IT initiatives with business goals continues to be the most frequently cited CIO activity in our survey, fewer CIOs that in previous years place it among the activities taking up most of their time: 64 percent, down from 71 % last year and 82 % two years ago.
• IT productivity efforts must leap beyond cost cutting at the margins. CIOs will have to make fundamental changes in the way IT operates and campaign for technological improvements that will transform cost structures and operating models throughout the enterprise.
• Company responses suggest why Web 2.0 remains of high interest: 69 percent of respondents report that their companies have gained measurable business benefits, including more innovative products and services, more effective marketing, better access to knowledge, lower cost of doing business, and higher revenues.
• IT executives, in general, are more focused on using Web tools to achieve internal improvements, while business development and sales functions often rely on the technologies to deliver better insights into markets or to interact with consumers.
• Half of respondents report that Web 2.0 technologies have fostered in-company interactions across geographic borders; 45 percent cite interactions across functions, and 39 percent across business units.
• For businesses to thrive over the next two years they will need an entrepreneurial chief information officer (CIO), according to recent research from analyst firm Gartner.
• By 2012, the research says that firms with the top 25 per cent of earnings growth will have CIOs with characteristics that include vision, persuasiveness and a willingness to take risks.
• According to Gartner, entrepreneurial CIOs are required at a time when the need to improve productivity is greatest.

SPONSOR

Accenture Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world's most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. For more information, visit http://www.accenture.com/