Aligned to Achieve

Chapter 6Push Alignment Beyond Sales and Marketing and into the CIO's Office

You've undoubtedly seen the increase in sales and marketing technology over the past several years. What began as simple email marketing tools and sales-force automation has exploded into thousands of software solutions that claim to do everything from schedule sales meetings to predict which leads are ready to buy and when.

Looking at only marketing technology, Scott Brinker, who writes the Chief Marketing Technologist blog, found 3,874 marketing technology solutions for his “2016 Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic.” It's really overwhelming, and it's become more so over time. As technology advances in general—from Siri to self-driving cars—new and creative technologies will continue to become available for sales and marketing teams.

As a sales or marketing leader, especially one driven by alignment, all of this new technology creates a lot of background noise that must be tuned out most of the time. Eventually, however, it's part of the alignment puzzle that will need to be addressed. Luckily, we've got ideas and recommendations to help you sort it all out.

Technology Is Shifting Faster than You

What we're seeing with respect to technology is that responsibilities are shifting, new roles are being created, executives are expected to know more, and the traditional role of IT is changing. Much of the thinking around technology and the supporting cast of roles didn't even exist a decade ago. ...