IT departments are finding themselves at war with marketing with internal battles for resources, personality clashes and misunderstanding of roles causing huge conflict.
Marketing departments are failing to explain their needs with fewer than one in ten marketing leaders admitting they think IT leaders understand what they do. This compares with 19% of IT leaders who said they think marketing understands what they do.
Three years ago, Gartner predicted a shift between CMOs and CIOs, with the marketing department predicted to spend more than IT departments by 2017.
A study "Marketing and IT: overcoming a cats-and-dogs history to create a seamless customer experience" has found that integration has been lost between the two departments.
The study claimed only 14% of marketing leaders and 17% of IT leaders feel that they are currently very integrated.
This contrasts with the desire of 92% of marketers and 75% IT leaders to build a more integrated strategy within their organisation.
Of the 201 respondents, 70% said integration is easier with a neutral third party helping the two teams come together. Full-service managed cloud providers are supported by 47% of marketing leaders and 40% of IT leaders to carry out this integration.
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Rackspace, which commissioned the study said that if these groups are at odds, it can cause the customer experience to slip and that they need to find common ground as they are increasingly tasked with working together on digital marketing and e-commerce strategy and execution.
The cloud firm has also discovered that the main frustration on both sides is the disagreement over working speeds, with 46% of marketing leaders saying IT does not work quick enough. As for IT leaders, 47% said that marketing wants IT to move too quickly, potentially compromising quality and security.
