Two interesting articles in one day....

Bringing the CMO and CTO together is an excellent opportunity! The only this morning's article "The Great Divide", lacked was the fact that it completely excludes the Marketing point of view? Here are some interesting thoughts I discovered...

While both the CMO & CTO share high-level goals, their priorities differ. Marketers find flexibility and agility most important, while IT execs value stability and continuity.

1. Allow IT to experiment.
2. Give IT a stake in marketing.
3. Let marketers tinker with technology.
4. Mix things up. Systems work better when IT and Marketing work in the same room and share responsibility for uptime.

The CMO's Role in a Customer-Centric Organization - I have been interested in Jay Galbraith's work on organization design for a while (I own and have read all the books he has written), his article in AdAge this morning is very exciting. Here are some nuggets:

"How customer-centric do we need to be?"; At the center of these challenges is the role of the chief marketing officer -- the person who needs to deliver thought leadership, lead the strategy debate and reorganization, and then integrate the various marketing types into a company-wide, customer-centric orientation.

The need for strong thought leadership begins by defining customer centricity. This task is more difficult than simply establishing a company lexicon.

many product-centric companies think that they are customer-centric; They drive their product-development process with customer insights. They use ergonomic and anthropological studies to guide product design. They test the design on focus groups and user groups. They measure customer satisfaction and so on. But at the end of the day, they are still product-centric. Why? Because they are trying to reach as many customers as possible for their product. Their metric is market share and customer retention.

A customer-centric business tries to find as many products and services as possible for the customer. They create solutions and experiences for their customers.

Solutions require customer insight and knowledge in order to create value for the customer segment. In general, the larger the solution -- the more products and services that are combined -- the greater the amount of customer insights and knowledge needed to create that solution.

The CMO's role? To be the thought leader who defines customer centricity and determines if the company is product-centric or customer-centric; The role of the CMO is one of generating and implementing cross-category solutions. The CMO needs to build and establish a robust insight-development process throughout the company to drive the development of solutions. Finally, the CMO will need to bring the brand architecture framework to bear. The CMO needs to have the leadership skills to manage this company-wide community. The CMO typically runs the marketing councils for the company.