In many companies, the CMO and DBA don’t really know each other. They may say hi in the hall as they pass one another, but that’s about as good as it gets. In fact, I’ve come across organizations in which the marketing staff is not allowed to communicate directly to the DBA without the IT manager or the CIO involved, due to security considerations! In large companies and enterprises, chances are that they don’t even share the same floor, building or even zip code.
In the past few years, marketing has grown to be highly dependent on data and technology. A company that is not leveraging its data (or collecting data for that matter), will not be able to keep up with the competition. We know that the CIO and CMO should be working closely together as a team to successfully deliver the marketing goals. The CIO-CMO team needs to provide the strategy and the interface between the company and the customer, responsibility for product development and heavily technological product marketing and sales.
One of the most important assets of a company in the digital era is its database. To remain competitive, every company needs to utilize their database intelligently, in all aspects of their marketing:
-Product Experiences- Whether the business sells cereal, vacation packages to Hawaii or DBA expertise, the product design, its packaging and delivery, can and should be influenced by data.
-Market Research must play a central role in decisions on how to face the market. Then, the marketer needs to track the behavior of sales prospects and customers and to leverage that data to analyze, understand, and improve the marketing efforts. The results? Better ROI. More profits. Improved customer satisfaction. I could go on and on.
The CMO needs to understand the technology at the core of the organization’s operations and the company technologist must understand the company’s business strategy and goals. When this happens, wonderful things can transpire.
However, marketers are not usually aware of what treasures may be hidden deep inside the data. They don’t know what queries need to be asked and which reports to generate. The CMO and DBA need to get in sync with one another. The marketing needs to define the information his team needs. The DBA needs to make the data accessible, presentable and to help the marketing team explore opportunities that may lie deep inside the database.
