As you know, I spend a fair amount of time focusing on marketing technology and marketing automation. So, when I recently came across an article by Gennipher Weeks entitled, “Why Marketing Needs to Play Nice with IT“, it caught my attention.

There are a few statements that I don’t agree with:

One example is that marketing will often take on a technology project in the name of it being a “marketing project,” when they would be better off collaborating with the IT department. Marketing doesn’t have the technical expertise to do it well, so they end up in various sorts of trouble, often with scaling or security. These are particularly problems with mobile and social technologies. Either the company ends up in trouble, or IT has to come in and fix up the mess, both of which aggravate the relations between the two departments.”

My problem with this statement is that more often than not, I can say the exact opposite of IT. While they may understand the technology of mobile and social, they frequently do not understand the business impact and applicability of the technology.

Conversely, tech-savvy marketers not only understand and identify new technologies, but they also understand the business impact and applicability.

I find this to be the case in most organizations.

It is possible to build a tech-savvy, analytic-oriented marketing team that can master technology issues identified in Gennipher’s post, especially in technology-focused industries. I know, as I have done this. The modern marketer must have a solid command of both technology and analytic insight in order to be successful. Just ask the people I hire. These skills are no longer independent of marketing. Any marketer who doesn’t possess these skills will eventually be usurped by those who do. IT is simply a tool in the marketer’s toolbox… it is no longer a foreign science that needs to be outsourced to another team.