Managing complex marketing technology deployments can be a challenge, and it’s up to marketing and IT departments to come together to create a tech blueprint that will allow marketers to handle campaigns and customer relationships.
“IT and marketing are becoming one and the same—we are more of the process IT team than our IT department. It’s becoming very intertwined and you can’t really separate marketing and IT anymore,” says Cynthia Gumbert, vp digital & new accounts with software company CA, who presented at the MarTech conference in San Francisco this month.
A successful marketing technology blueprint needs to identify goals in several key areas. First, marketers need to 
figure out their ideal vision for the customer experience and journey and their desired state of marketing tech to fill that buyer journey, Gumbert says.
Next, marketing and IT need to identify what tech pieces are already in place and what elements need to be added. Gumbert says marketers should ask themselves if they are really leveraging the pieces they have in place and whether those pieces are integrated, as well as identify any duplications or unnecessary capabilities.
“The customer journey isn’t all technology-driven, but it does effect the journey. We want our B2B customers to have a great experience as leads, and it’s critical that they get a good first impression. You need to align your technology roadmap with data flow, marketing capabilities and customer experiences,” Gumbert says.
Once everything is in place, communicating the value of marketing technology investments and choices is the final piece of the puzzle. Creating a blueprint provides company executives and the board of directors a complete, all-in-one view of marketing tech strategy and investment, and creates a playbook for joint communication between marketing and IT, Gumbert says. In addition, it allows tech vendors and partners to identify and better evaluate the potential for vendor/partner value, she says. Sound advice.
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