Leading the Epic Revolution: How CIOs Drive Innovation and Create Value Across the Enterprise

Chapter 6

Evolving Relationships Across the C-Suite

When I met recently with the CIO Executive Leadership Alliance in New York City, one of the speakers was Linda Ban, Global CIO Study Program director from IBM. Linda presented on the implications paper from the IBM Institute of Business Value, which analyzed the interviews from 3,200-plus CIOs and 1,700-plus chief marketing officers (CMOs) on the changing relationship between these two executives.

Surprisingly, “while CMOs feel underprepared to manage the impact of market factor changes, CIOs are poised to help in a number of areas.” Linda elaborated by showing how many new demands are being placed on marketing, such as social media, channel and device choices, and data explosion, all of which happen to be areas of IT expertise. Likewise, “CIO projects for improving organizational competitiveness correlate to the CMO's technology focus areas.” The top three overlap areas include: business intelligence and analytics, social networking, and mobility solutions. With these common goals and intersecting opportunities at your company, are the CMO and CIO acquaintances or allies?

“The CIOs' opportunity to drive value extends beyond technology solutions, and includes the responsibility of overall data management, privacy, and compliance. There are gaps in the CMOs' understanding of the importance of data management, governance, and risk management,” says Linda. Given the knowledge and strengths of IT, the CIO has an incredible opportunity ...