IBM’s CMO-CIO Leadership Exchange recently came to a close.
Over 300 IBM customers were invited. IBM says the purpose of the leadership exchange was “to explore how a new computing era is transforming the future of the enterprise.” I recently read a recap of the event on the IDC technology marketing blog that stated the event was designed to “explore their business relationships and objectives related to Marketing Automation.”
Rich Vancil of IDC noticed 5 key trends from the event:
1. Technology is moving out of back office functions such as finance or operations, and into front office functions of marketing and selling.
2. Marketers and Sellers begin this journey into Marketing Automation with the problematic reality of attaining the current “Single version of the truth” regarding customer data and the customer record. They are hampered by IT legacy, management systems and processes, and company culture.
3. Capture and analysis of Big Data in Marketing is the quest. And 85% of marketing data is unstructured: the hardest form of data to analyze.
4. The future of marketing excellence will be owned by those who master predictive analytics that are extracted from customer data. With proper instrumentation and monitoring, it is easy enough to know where your customers have been or where they are at present. But where are they going, and what is their next move?
5. And, overall, this whole Marketing Automation mission is a race against time. There is a 12-36 month window to become a “Big Data Marketer”. Those who do not enter and win the race will risk not just the absence of marketing excellence, but might put their whole business at risk.
Read the full post: “IBM Starts the CMO + CIO Dialogue“
