Marketing vs IT Dynamics in Customer Experience Management

Connecting eCommerce and Digital Marketing

HOW CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MANAGEMENT IS CHANGING

MARKETING AND IT DYNAMICS


IntroductionCustomer experience management is fast becoming the core pillar of effective digital marketing and data has a critical role to play. The trend for multi-channel communication continues to grow and with it the potential for organisations to not only know so much more about their customers, but to use this data to optimise the customer experience. For ecommerce organisations in particular this can positively impact the key measures of success.

Today, there is a wealth of data available to marketing teams, from purchase history and demographics, to social interactions and sentiment, to customer lifetime value. When integrated into a web strategy, these insights and information can drive advanced, data-led marketing initiatives such as personalisation and automation to transform the customer experience.

•Customerengagement–byidentifyingwhocustomersare,where they are, what they want, how they buy and how they want to be contacted

•Customerretention–buildingloyaltybygoingbeyondinitialengagement to understanding what brings customers back

•Optimisation–usingtestingandanalysisofdatatoimprovehow the sales funnel operates

However data is not an end in itself. It is an enabler of customer experience management. It isn’t simply enough to have access to the data; it has to be used effectively.

This new emphasis on the way marketers build, access and use data is creating new ways of working for today’s marketing teams.Oneaspectinparticularisthechangingrelationshipthatmarketing professionals have with information technology.

As the owners and those with the skills to manage data, IT professionals are starting to see their role become much more visible to other departments within the organisation. A much closer relationship between IT and marketing looks to be essential.

To gauge how the industry is coping with this shift, we surveyed 100 marketing decision makers and 110 IT decision makers. With data playing such a vital role in ecommerce, we also ensured a minimum of 70% of respondents work in businesses of that type.

We explored their approaches to digital strategies, the role of data and how both IT and marketing are tackling the challenges a data-led approach is presenting. We also explored the evolution of the IT and marketing relationship, asking how they perceive each other and their respective roles, and the extent to which they collaborate.

Werevealourfindingsinthisreportandpresentapictureofwhat the marketing and IT relationship looks like today with actionable steps to help shape this partnership for the future, to optimise your digital strategy and customer experience.

Connecting eCommerce and Digital marketing

The current working relationship betweenmarketing and IT The requirement for a much closer partnership between IT and marketing is a relatively new development, which makes it interesting to look at how the two are currently working together.

We asked both IT and marketing professionals for their view on how closely they work with each other on digital strategy and customer experience management.

THE IT TO MARKETING GAPThe majority of marketing and IT professionals already work collaboratively on projects and initiatives for the web strategy. However, there is a clear disconnect between how IT and marketing perceive their working relationship, with IT having a much rosier view than their marketing colleagues.

None of the above

We don’t work together much, but I’d like to work with them more

We only bothereach other if we have to

We work collaboratively on projects and initiatives

We tend to ignore each other

HOW CLOSELY DO MARKETING AND IT PROFESSIONALS WORK TOGETHER ON WEB STRATEGY

Marketing

IT

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

79% of IT professionals believe they work collaboratively with marketing, but only 58% of marketing professionals believe this is the case.


THE ECOMMERCE RELATIONSHIPWhen looking at ecommerce businesses, the relationship between IT and marketing appears to be particularly collaborative, with 88% of IT professionals and 64% of marketers agreeing they work together.

The gap between the marketing and IT perception of the strength of this collaboration is greater, however this disparity is not perhaps as bad as it seems. Half of the marketing professionals who don’t work with IT recognise the gap and believe they should work with their IT colleagues more.

We don’t work together much,I think we should work with them

more closely

We only bothereach other if we have to

We work collaboratively on projects and initiatives

We tend to ignore each other

HOW DO MARKETING AND IT PROFESSIONALS IN ECOMMERCE WORK TOGETHER ON WEB STRATEGY?

Marketing

IT

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Jasper Bell, Strategy Consultant at digital agency Amaze, believes there isn’t enough collaboration, based on his own experience of in-house mar-keting and IT teams: “The issue is often that whilst marketing is viewed as the ‘business’ and holders of ‘requirements’, IT is viewed as a delivery entity withoutsufficientlicencetoengagein‘strategic’development.’

According to Bell, the problem with this approach is that ‘it doesn’t take into account technology-driven trends or opportunities arising from data and systemic optimisation. Secondly, it encourages IT to adopt a ‘delivery-only’ mentality to cus-tomer projects, not recognising the added value technologists can bring to solution delivery and management in our connected world.’

“Marketing is viewed as the ‘business’ and holders of ‘requirements’, IT is viewed as a delivery entity” – Jasper Bell, Strategy Consultant, Amaze

The disparity between marketing and IT suggests that although they are working more closely, they are struggling to collaborate and align on their respective goals and objectives for business growth.


AREAS OF COLLABORATIONTo understand how marketing and IT professionals perceive the value of collaboration for website strategies we asked IT and marketing professionals to identify where both roles should have influenceacrosstenkeyareas,andthereforeworkmostcloselytogether.

Overall,ITprofessionalsclearlyplacegreaterimportanceoncollaboration than marketing professionals, indicating their desire to be involved in driving digital growth alongside their marketing counterparts. In contrast, marketing professionals largely believe this is not necessary across many areas of the web strategy.

The data suggests that marketers believe decision-making over the different elements of their web strategy can be silo-ed, and belong to either IT or marketing. Up until a few years ago this was largely the case. Platform selection, hosting and multichannel solutions were largely led by IT in terms of purchase decision, software requirement and implementation. In contrast, the customer relationship and website experience belonged to the marketing team.

But there is a shift in technology ownership happening from IT tomarketing,withanalystGartnerpredictingthatCMOswillspendmoreonITthanCIOsby2017.Withthatinmind,thedata implies that the reason marketing teams don’t believe joint decision-making is important is because they are comfortable buying technology themselves. The minority believes web content management and ecommerce platform selection should be a joint decision, 26% and 39% respectively. The same applies for hosting solutions (20%) and mobile strategies (33%).

WHICH AREAS OF WEBSITE STRATEGY DO YOU BELIEVE BOTH MARKETING AND IT SHOULD HAVE INFLUENCE?

IT and marketing professionals recognise the need for collaboration and, while there is considerable differentiation on how that should manifest, customer experience is the area where IT and marketing are clearly aligned.

There is however one clear area where marketing’s desire for collaboration is high, and that is withincustomerexperience,whereover70%citedbothITandmarketingshouldhaveinfluence.


Data priorities and objectivesIT and marketing professionals are working closely together, but our research shows there is still some confusion as to which areas this collaboration will beofthemostbenefit.WithdatanowapriorityforbothITandmarketing,it’simportanttounderstandhowtheyareapproachingthis.

To get a fuller picture, we investigated the areas of data strategy that IT and marketing are turning their attention to. Are their priorities aligned, or is there a disconnect in the way data is used to inform and develop web strategies, particularly those around customer experience?

THE DATA APPROACH OF ITThe vast majority of IT professionals are taking data strategy seriously (75%). When asked how high data strategy sits in their list of priorities, 23% of IT professionals said it was number one, with a further 52% stating it was important. These numbers increased to 24% and 56% respectively for those in ecommerce. Only5%saidthatitisnotapriorityatthemoment.

Around a third (35%) of IT professionals aren’t looking to data to improve the online experience, with 20% saying it is not integrated into business operations and a further 15% saying they simply didn’t use it at all for this purpose. The results are similar for ecommerce, with 22% saying that data strategy is not a focus and no integration into the business exists.

The research does show that those IT professionals working in ecommerce are having trouble using and integrating data into business operations in an actionable way. With the onslaught of big data, it’s not surprising, where there is such a wealth of data available. It serves to emphasise the complexity of data management and the challenges organisations are facing in making decisions that lead to an optimised customer experience.

We know the kind of data we need to collect and already

integrate actionable data into daily business operations

We know the kind of data we need but have not been able to

integrate actionable data into daily business operations

Data strategy is not a current focus for IT so we have yet to inegrate it

into business operations

We do not use data to improve

online experience

WHAT APPROACH DOES YOUR ORGANISATION TAKE TO DATA IN RELATION TO IMPROVING ONLINE EXPERIENCE?

Marketing

IT

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45

Onamorepositivenote,asignificant43%ofITprofessionals-and41%inecommerce-haveadatastrategyinplaceasanintegralpart of their business operations.


Implementing a real timedata strategy

Personalisation

Improving the

customer experience

Mobile and multichannel

Streamlining the checkout

International market

expansion and fulfilment

WHAT ARE YOUR PRIORITIES WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR WEB AND/OR ECOMMERCE STRATEGY/APPROACH?

Marketing

Marketing inEcommerce

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40

MARKETING’S DATA APPROACHCustomers are the top priority in marketing. The research shows that improving the customer experience comes top when it comes to web strategies at 39% (36% for those in ecommerce). Expansion into international markets also scored highly at 32%, demonstrating the acknowledgement that the web opens up possibilities to expand. Marketers clearly want to use data to understand how to best approach an international expansion and to manage the brand experience across all markets. Real time data strategy is also important for many, and personalisation increases in importance in ecommerce.

The picture is of complex ambitions of marketing professionals for their data strategy. Effective personalisation, real time data strategy and customer experience are not simple to approach.

Fortunately, it seems that the IT professionals with the skills and knowledge to take on these tasks are making them a priority. However, there are evidently challenges to overcome.


Data challenges To identify the obstacles that are getting in the way of data strategy, we asked IT professionals about the challenges as an open question.Threecoreareasofconcernwereidentified.

WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS TO USINGCUSTOMER DATA AND WEB ANALYTICS AS EFFECTIVELY AS YOU COULD BE?

• Security:The most frequently mentioned barrier is security, but this manifests in two ways. Firstly there is security in terms of protection of the company’s data and avoiding leaks, but the more prominent appeared to be user security. Many IT managersspecificallyreferencedtheDataProtectionActas ‘the biggest headache’, indicating that compliance and regulations are the biggest barrier

• Cost:Budget restrictions is a clear secondary concern. Time and resource were closely linked to this, indicating a requirementforcheaperandmoreefficientdatastrategysolutions

• Integration:Difficulttousesoftwareandintegrationof

diverse data sets were regularly referenced as impediments. ‘Poor integration between toolsets’, ‘combining data from several sources’ and ‘diverse IT platforms’ were cited by many, showing that systems and tools not only need to be cheaper, but need to be easier to integrate

“Friction area is typically security policies, social media and datawarehouse design”– John P. Lake, Vice President of Sales andMarketing, Rain for Rent

John P. Lake, Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Rain for Rent,hashadfirst-handexperienceoftheseproblems.Heexplains that in his organisation. IT supports the architecture andwe(marketing)managethecontentandstrategy.Overallrelationship is good, but the friction area is typically security policies, social media, and data warehouse design.


The marketing sample echoed some of these issues, with being able to connect the different types of data cited as a way to improve data strategy for 50% of marketing professionals working in ecommerce.

WHAT ARE YOUR PRIORITIES WHEN IT COMES TO YOUR WEB AND/OR ECOMMERCE STRATEGY/APPROACH?

WHAT TYPES OF DATA DOES YOUR MARKETINGDEPARTMENT HAVE ACCESS TO?

Having access to theright data in real time

Connecting all our different data types more effectively for a single

view of customers

More resource or a dedicated team to focus on data insight

Use of (or access to) data that

enables work with predictive

analytics

Better use of big data in orderto produce actionable insigts

Customer data e.g. demographic, purchase history, behavioural

Real time e.g. click stream, search for the complete buyer journey

Financial e.g. transactional,

sales revenues

Social e.g. sentiment, engagement, interests, influencer identification,

revenue impact

Site analytics e.g. goal and source to conversion rates, ROI and

customer LTV

Marketing

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Thebiggerissuecited,however,wasactuallyhavingaccesstotherightdataatall,specificallyhavingthat data in real time, alongside anything that enables predictive analytics.

The majority of marketing teams (61% overall, 68% for ecommerce) do have access to customer data covering demographics and purchase history, but it is perhaps surprising that the number is not higher for this basic kind of data.

Marketing inEcommerce


Overall,itwassurprisingtoseehowfewmarketershadaccessto key data to drive customer experience management and web strategies.

Only29%haveaccesstoanyof this in real time, with fewer specificallyinecommerce(27%) and, while access to financialdataontransactionsand revenue is common, one would expect the number to be higher (52% overall, 57% for ecommerce).Accesstofinancialdataontransactionsandrevenueiscommon,but again you could expect the number to be higher than it is (52% overall and 57% for ecommerce).

You would expect most businesses to have access to basic social and site analytics data. However it seems less than half of marketing professionals have access to more advanced social data,forexampleonsentiment,engagementorinfluencers.

When we look at marketing’s data priorities (23% said real-time strategy, 19% personalisation and 39% customer experience) the majority do have access to the data that should enable them to focus on these.

If we compare this to what we saw earlier on what marketing’s data priorities are, 23% said real-time strategy, 19% personalisation and 39% customer experience. It seems that the majority of marketers do have access to the data that should enable them to approach their priorities, as seen in the higher figuresforcustomer,real-timeandsocialdata.

Thedifficultiesincustomerexperiencemanagementseemtolie in the implementation, the challenges of data management, integration and cost that we came across in the previous section. So in a perfect world, what would the marketing and IT relationship look like and how would they best approach their data strategy?


Bridging the gap between marketing and ITFocusingonwebstrategiesthatdrivecustomerexperienceanddefiningtheITandmarketingrelationshipisnotwithoutitschallenges.Follow these steps to ensure you maximise the results of your approach:

ALIGNMENT FROM THE TOPAt the start of this report we reveal that within most organisations IT and Marketing already work closely together, however they are not able to fully collaborate and educate themselves on what their respective goals and objectives are. Mark Lewis, from independent ecommerce consultancy Practicology, suggests organisations need someone with authority across both departments to drive this: “In all the projects that we get involved in, you need to engage with all the stakeholders. IT tends to be quite safe, and thorough, and risk averse, whereas Marketing tends to be more ‘now, now, we want to try this, we want to get out there.’ And it’s really that cultural difference that you need to try and bridge, which is really a question of just working together and having the right stakeholder who has the authority across both parts to make all the teams work together”

AGREE ON THE BUYER JOURNEYIT and Marketing needs a common understanding of the customer journey and experience that they want to provide, short term and long term, in order to align their focus. Marketing should provide a picture of what the customer’s journey looks like today and work with IT to identify improvement areas with respect to technology tweaks and enhancements. Ideally, organizations should have a dedicated team working on this to add value on an on-going basis.

A MUTUAL DIGITAL ROADMAPThere are key areas, such as content management, ecommerce and mobile strategies, where marketing keeps IT at arm’s length. But a non-collaborative approach should be taken with caution.Theeffectivenessofdeliverytoolsandplatformscanfailbecauseofatechnologyandinfrastructuralmisfit.Marketingneedstodevelopplansandprocessesthatprovidealong-termview of the business goals in relation to the customer journey. These then need to be translated and communicated effectively into system requirements so IT understands the digital roadmap, to provide the right support in buying new technologies.

TimWalters,PartnerandPrincipalAnalystatDigitalClarityGroup,explainstheslightlydifferingapproacheshere:“I think that because of the maturity of the web and other digital channels and the central and indispensable role it plays for any business organisation, now we’re at the point where IT and marketing have to come together and work on this as a core strategic business problem. So it doesn’t make sense from a strategic perspective anymore for it to be ‘IT’s issue’, or ‘marketing’s issue’. They both have to be working together in order to prescribe and understand the kind of experiences that they want to be building, and how they’re going to build the infrastructure and consistently deliver and optimise them to improve the process. So we’ve got the infrastructural elements from IT and the operational elements from marketing, and both of those now have to come together.”


SETTING THE RIGHT METRICS AND DATA ANALYTICSWithmostmarketershavingaccesstocustomer,financialandsiteanalyticsonabasiclevel,theyneedtodeterminewhattypeofmetricsandadvanceddataanalyticsarestillrequiredtobuildafullunderstandingof(andpredictiveanalyticalinsightsinto)customers.Oncethisisclear,marketerscanbettercollaboratewithITbyprioritisingdataintegrationareaswherepersonalisation and real time marketing can improve conversions and deliver better business results. Metrics and roadmaps to doing this should be mutually developed, as should the measurement metrics; thus driving shared business objectives and the same goal.

LEVERAGE INTEROPERABLE TECHNOLOGYIt is clear that integration is a major obstacle. Although there is no single technology platform that can cater for every need of every customer, organisations should be wary about using widely different platforms that are hard to integrate. Prioritising technologies that are interoperable with what is on the organisation’s digital roadmap is key.

Context is the big driver for interoperability; you can always learn more about the customer experience and that gives you the ability to deliver more. For marketing, this means looking for technologies that give as much control about the context of the customer’s experiences as possible. For IT, interoperability is a technical challenge to ensure legacy (and often varied) technology platformsworktogether.Choosingpre-integratedandopenstandardstechnologiesthatarecompatiblewithanorganisation’sdigitalroadmapcansignificantlyreducethecostandcomplexityinimplementation.

DON’T BE AFRAID OF SHIFTING ROLESOurresearchrevealsthatmarketingorganisationsareincreasinglytakingownershipofmarketingtechnologyselectionandcanonlyincludeITonspecific,probablymorecomplex,dataprocesses.GartnerhasforecastthatCMOswilloutspendCIOsby2017.Thismeansthatbecomingtechnology-savvyquicklyiskeyformarketingandthereforewewillseeariseinnewrolessuchas‘MarketingTechnologist’or‘ChiefDigitalOfficer’,whichblendmarketingandtechnicalskillsetstoanewlevel.ThisalsomeanstheCIOmustbecomemoremarketing-savvy,tounderstand the goals of customer experience management and its correlations to driving business results.

USE AN AGILE APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENTOrganisationsmustbeabletomoveatInternetspeed.It’stheconnectedconsumerdrivingthemarketforwardandorganisationsneedtobeabletorespondrapidlytothatmovement.Asan example, if in 2009 you had a three year development plan, you could have missed the whole opportunity around tablets.

Often,IThearsmarketingtalkaboutagility,butdoesn’tknowwhatthatmeans.Marketerswanttodomore,butdon’talwaysknowhow,andarelookingtoITtohelpthem.Bybeingmoreagile, and continuously developing and testing, Marketing and IT can improve their common understanding of the organisation’s over-riding goals and work towards the same objectives.


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Sitting at the centre of the digital marketing ecosystem, EPiServer empowers online and IT professionals to create superior customer experience for more than 20,000 websites worldwide. Built on .net, and supported by a pioneering partner network of over 690 partners in over 30 countries, EPiServers platform gives customers the ability to deliver the right content to the right person in the right format at a time that suits them. This approach means customerscanmaximizetheirinvestmentindigitalmarketingandincreaseROI.Thecompanywasfoundedin1994andhasofficesintheUnitedStates,Sweden,Denmark,Norway,Finland,TheNetherlands,SouthAfrica,Australia,Spain,UAEandtheUnitedKingdom.EPiServeriscontrolledbytheIK2007Fund.IKInvestmentPartnersisaEuropeanprivateequityfirmwithNordicroots,managing€5.7billioninfundcommitments.

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