"Time to ditch the IT department?"

Anyone who has worked for an e-marketing or e-communications team will find something familiar in this scenario:

You want to pilot a new online approach. You know what you need, find a simple, easy solution, identify the right provider, purchase a license, (under-the-radar of course). Just as you are beginning to enjoy success, someone from IT calls you insisting that you have to shut the whole thing down. You are forced to spend wasted time explaining/justifying/arguing why your online approach is adding value to the business/delivering results/meeting objectives. If you are lucky you can escalate the battle up to a marketing leader who will support you. Otherwise, you are told, (by the very same people who should be ecstatic about your results), to “work with IT” and what follows are months of wasted time and a clunky, inferior, internally designed alternative.

Tristan Rogers, managing director of the Concrete Group has been busy raising the issue within the UK Marketing community. Last week he wrote an article for technologyweekly.mad.co.uk provocatively entitled "Time to ditch the IT department?".  It requires membership to view, so here's an excerpt:

Given the ease with which […] online solutions can be deployed, why do marketing departments still insist on referring this technology choice to IT departments? In the vast majority of cases the "pay as you go" service provided is far superior to that of an internal IT department […] so why are marketing departments so loath to take control over this key business issue? More bizarrely, why do so many persist in bowing to the supposed expertise of IT when these people do not, obviously, understand the marketing needs of the organisation and appear incapable of delivering any kind of technology solution in under 12 to 18 months?

Although here he makes sweeping statements about marketing departments, in his letter to this month’s The Marketer, he does acknowledge:

[…] maverick individuals that have managed to introduce new technology under the radar of the IT department [...]

As an ex-maverick, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the exact same issue… why does it occur with such depressing frequency?

This is the situation as far as I understand it:

First, take the IT perspective - for years, IT department have enjoyed autonomy, big budgets, power and respect. Clearly, they don’t want to lose their status.  Rather than stepping aside, admitting weakness in their department and letting other make decisions on emerging technology, they will try to assert their authority. That’s human/organisational behaviour at its most predictable. Are we really surprised?

What is surprising is the question Tristan asks:

“…why are marketing departments so loath to take control over this key business issue?”

The extent of the problem will really depend on how far along the online learning curve an organisation is. We have to remember:

1. Many organisations haven’t clearly defined what e-Marketing / e-Communications is, or how it integrates with other aspects of the business


2. Traditional marketing practioners often make the mistake of believing because online professionals work with technology they are IT people


3. Many marketing leaders are frightened of IT. Since they don’t understand it, they find it easier to defer all technology related decisions to the IT department rather than expose themselves to any imagined risk


4. Even if online professionals sit within marketing departments, it is very possible that their own marketing leaders don’t understand what they do or how their work fits in with the overall marketing strategy. If marketing decision-makers don’t take full ownership of online, others will continue to make decisions for them

In reality, IT’s remit shouldn’t overlap at all with e-Marketing’s: different budget, different goals, different technology and so on.

However, many e-Marketing teams still work within a matrix reporting structure which includes IT. Or else, they operate in a grey area where it is not clear who has ultimate decision making power over online technology because Marketing leadership hasn’t fully integrated their online teams. I know many people who are responsible for internet content and e-marketing who still officially sit within the IT department.  That’s the problem!

Dave Chaffey and e-Consultancy did an interesting piece of research on organisational structures and management of digital teams. This area is still pretty new, and evolving before our eyes. We have a lot of information about how to make e-marketing campaigns successful, but very little about how to successfully structure and manage e-marketing departments.  I think many companies are struggling with this very issue, which is why agencies like Tristan’s come up against such insanity.

As best practice structures and organisational designs emerge, the delination between enterprise IT and online marketing will be settled. Until then, I predict that the marketing/IT struggle for online technology will unfortunately continue.