The IT and Marketing Departments Aren't Getting Along, And It's Affecting Innovation

Chief Information Officers and Chief Marketing Officer don’t seem to be getting along, and it’s one of the reasons technology innovation has stalled.  According to the latest Harvey Nash CIO Survey, CIO’s say the Information Technology department has the weakest relationship with the marketing department, with a whopping 72 percent believing it could be improved.

Why is this a big deal?  In recent years, with the growth of digital, mobile and social media, collaboration between the marketing department and the IT function is having a greater role in shaping IT budgets.  If they aren’t getting along, then innovation is likely to stall, and it appears to be doing so.   The report, which surveys over 2,000 CIOs, showed that only three percent of CIOs believe their organization’s innovation potential has been fully realized. This is even worse than last year’s five percent.

Also hurting innovation is CIOs view that they are unsupported by the board and from C-level peers (and lack of pay raises couldn’t have helped).  The report showed that 57 percent of  CIOs believe they lack support to some extent from their board, and 49 percent struggle to build support from their C-level peers in achieving their technology vision.   The report also showed that only 26 percent received raises in the past year, while 64 percent still are still experiencing pay freezes

The report showed that while almost half of CIO’s are managing an IT budget that has grown compared to last year, over one-fifth of CIOs feel they have lost an element of direct control over their IT assets in the last five years.

The survey showed that companies are slow to utilize the cloud, mobility, and collaboration solutions, despite CIO’s enthusiasm the technologies.  In fact, only 10 percent of CIO’s describe their cloud services usage as great and 22 percent have done little or nothing with the cloud, the report showed.

Mobility wasn’t much better either.  When asked specifically about how much progress their organization has made in realizing the potential of mobility, one in five CIOs stated that little or none of their assets have been mobilized.

CIOs also site little time and too few resources being invested in innovation for the reason behind meeting their goals.  In fact, when asked if their organization was in a position to achieve its innovation potential, only two percent of CIOs said they had met that goal, even though 71 percent see great potential for innovation in their industry.

CIOs have lofty goals for 2013, however, with 68 percent saying they will invest more in mobility, 58 percent planning to invest more in cloud, and 50 percent planning to invest more in collaboration.  But with IT budgets being spread over multiple departments, pay freezes and a lack of resources being invested, it looks like CIOs have their work cut out for them.