Does there have to be drama in the C-suite between the CIO and CMO?
No, there doesn’t, at least not according to NetApp, a $6.5 billion storage technology company based in Sunnyvale, CA. This video was of particular interest to me because, well, I used to consult for NetApp and go to work there every day. As a company that regularly makes the “Great Places To Work” list every year, NetApp is well-known in Silicon Valley for its empowering culture.
In this 1-year-old Forbes video moderated by Rich Karlgaard, NetApp’s CIO, Cynthia Stoddard, and CMO, Julie Parrish, discuss how they are able to collaborate together by recognizing the need for transparency and the role of technology in marketing.
According to the video, Julie Parrish acknowledged that her marketing team might in fact be perpetrating “shadow IT” — or implementing technology outside of the purview of the IT department — and raised her hand for an audit. Stoddard’s team came in and did an evaluation, and found several areas that needed to be addressed. Voila, their partnership was born.
As a woman who cheers on other women in the C-suite, it was great for me to see two talented and intelligent women IN the C-suite of a Fortune 500 company at all. The other thing that was great to see was the CIO and CMO having an open line of communication and being willing to dialogue about the role of technology.
As VP of Marketing for Adeptia, I fully grok the urgency that all marketing leaders feel to stand up a demand generation engine that puts measurable leads into the sales pipeline. If Julie Parrish — or any other CMO — waited around for IT to come to her aid and help her implement a marketing automation software program, she could be waiting a long time. Meanwhile, sales — and revenue — can’t wait.
But good for NetApp’s CMO for being open about the fact that her Marketing team uses technology, and for inviting the CIO to come in and offer course corrections at all. And kudos to NetApp’s CIO for recognizing that self-service — and enabling business users (like those in Marketing) to use technology to achieve their strategic missions — is what’s needed from IT. In my opinion, IT has to either help or tell us they can’t help, but recommend a way forward (and then get out of the way). It sounds like that’s exactly what Parrish and Stoddard have figured out.