I am a 31 year old project manager, forged, born and bred in the IT sector for about 7 years now. This is the first entry in my blog, I had this blog for a few months now but a recent event has triggered me to actually start using it. Btw, for everyone who wants to find more about my background check out my website on www.tomvandewiele.com. The event in question is the following: on the 24th of September i started a four day class of marketing in the TIAS NIMBAS Business School in Tilburg (the Netherlands). Amongst the 20+ participants i was the only IT person. It was costly and i had to pay for it myself but it was worth it!
ING Direct, Zara, H&M. Does anyone have any idea what these companies have incommon? Besides being amongst the most profitable companies in their respective sector, they all have build their business model and competive advantages on an intricate combination of Marketing and IT.
If you would do a random survey amongst employees in all sectors and you would ask them which departments are the most opposite in their company... my best guess would be that they mention Marketing and IT as a typical example of two worlds far apart.
One could argue that the survival of any business in the 21th century is dependent on the these two worlds cooperating and getting to know each other better.
Food for thought in this article and the excerpt below:
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The survey also showed that in 28% of the companies, the marketing department does not alert the I.T. department about impending website marketing campaigns at all, and 46% of them only talk to the I.T. department immediately before the launch of the new campaign. In addition, only 75% of the marketing professionals surveyed knew how much traffic their websites could handle." {excerpt from http://www.geek.com/marketing-and-it-dont-talk/}
Let's replace in the above exerpt 'campaign' by 'product' and 'website' by 'production capacity'. I am currently working at a major Dutch Telecom player as program manager in the Retail department, at my workplace on a board i have pinned an artical which stated that the dutch consumer organisation gives up the fight with the telecom giant in relation to the thousands of people waiting for their new internet connection and VOIP products to be delivered.
The marketeers had created a very good product but somehow the company failed to ensure proper implementation in the front and back office. The IT systems were not properly adjusted to the new products, the engineers that deliver and service the products could not keep up with the demand. More than 50% of the orders for this specific product was not going to be delivered in time (or never in the case the client cancelled his order). In their peak, they received ca. 20000 extra orders for this product combo every week.
My conclusion and opionion is that Marketing needs to be given a more formal mandate (together with IT and the production department) to realise an adequate implementation of new products and services. This closeness between departments is also crucial for the operational activitities, continuous improvement accross these departments has a huge potential for reducing life long frustrations and conflicts between departments and also for improving customer service.
I hope to receive your thoughts on this.
Let's replace in the above exerpt 'campaign' by 'product' and 'website' by 'production capacity'. I am currently working at a major Dutch Telecom player as program manager in the Retail department, at my workplace on a board i have pinned an artical which stated that the dutch consumer organisation gives up the fight with the telecom giant in relation to the thousands of people waiting for their new internet connection and VOIP products to be delivered.
The marketeers had created a very good product but somehow the company failed to ensure proper implementation in the front and back office. The IT systems were not properly adjusted to the new products, the engineers that deliver and service the products could not keep up with the demand. More than 50% of the orders for this specific product was not going to be delivered in time (or never in the case the client cancelled his order). In their peak, they received ca. 20000 extra orders for this product combo every week.
My conclusion and opionion is that Marketing needs to be given a more formal mandate (together with IT and the production department) to realise an adequate implementation of new products and services. This closeness between departments is also crucial for the operational activitities, continuous improvement accross these departments has a huge potential for reducing life long frustrations and conflicts between departments and also for improving customer service.
I hope to receive your thoughts on this.
