Technology vendors, through mergers and acquisitions, are moving more into the marketing field, as the CMO’s role continues to evolve to include more technology functions. Highlighting the actions of companies such as Adobe, IBM, Oracle, and Salesforce, The Jordan, Edmiston Group, Inc. (JEGI) has proposed a framework it calls the “Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) Stack,” showing how different software components and services are being forced to interact more often.
“Basically, the stack, as it appears in our graphic, includes software components that, individually, are fairly well-known and recognizable,” said David Clark, managing director of JEGI, an investment bank for media, information, marketing services, and technology. “These individual software components are not new to sophisticated CMOs or IT organizations, but the extent to which they are being asked to inter-operate is. And that’s given rise to a whole new level of technology infrastructure design or architecture and technology implementation and tech maintenance services that we think are new to the purview of the CMO.”
JEGI’s EMM Stack starts at the bottom with digital asset and marketing asset management (DAM/MAM), followed by web content management systems (WCM), leading into the more well-known CRM, followed by multi-channel marketing systems (MCM). Toward the top of the stack, JEGI highlights customer experience management (CEM), analytics, and finally, business intelligence systems.
While this stack description isn’t new, the mergers and acquisitions taking place around the stack are, Clark said. Additionally, he cited information from Gartner that predicted that by 2017, the CMO will spend more on IT services than the CIO, especially as marketing becomes more technology-driven.
“There’s this rush to the middle ground by the large incumbent agency and creative services providers and the IT and consulting firms, to be able to present themselves and their wares to the CMO,” he said, “given that the CMO is controlling so much more of the technology budgets that has been the case in the past.”
As the CMO role evolves, what does this mean for agencies? Many agencies are seeing their clients shift some work to companies like Deloitte, Accenture, Sapient, and more, but Clark said he sees agencies using this opportunity to invest in talent and make sure they have the capabilities that these technology-enabled companies also provide.
“I think there will always be a central role for the agencies,” Clark said. “They have so much intellectual property around the creative process and marketing disciplines that their role in the ecosystem, while it is challenged, I don’t think it is threatened in any sort of existential sense.”
But is this kind of information exclusive to marketers? Clark doesn’t think so. With the increasing importance of content — much of which is created through partnerships with publishers or media companies — companies often look at conversions, interactions, and other data points based on how users connect with content as part of their business intelligence and analytics from the top of the stack.
Overall, while the content and information from this EMM Stack isn’t new, Clark said, the relationships around it, and the consolidation that will come from it, is the important story.
