A new study has reaffirmed the fledging relationship between CMOs and CIOs and the key it can be to business success or failure.

Failing to collaborate effectively was one of the main issues that CMOs and CIOs face when working together, a direct result of having differing priorities with only one in 10 believing that the working relationship between CMOs and CIOs is at the right level.

Business services firm, Accenture, surveyed 400 senior marketing and 250 information technology executives in 10 countries, finding that, when collaborating on a marketing initiative, neither the marketing executives nor the IT executives came away satisfied.

CMOs reported that gaining customer insight was their number one motivator for collaborating with IT, but CIOs ranked this 10th in the study on their list of reasons to work together. The top motivation for a CIO was to improve the customer experience, whereas It was only third on the list of the CMO.

Despite the issues in collaboration raised by the survey, both CMOs and CIOs believe their relationship has improved over the past year with 45% of marketing executives and 47% of IT executives sharing this opinion.

Accenture suggested the skills mix in both organisations should be updated whereby the marketing department would become more tech savvy and the IT organisation would become more agile and responsive to market demands and that the CMO should be identified as the ‘chief experience officer’ and IT should be looked at as a strategic partner with marketing and not just as a platform provider.