Mobile Wars - CMO vs CIO Kinvey

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    Where is the branded equivalent of Snapchat? Where is the enterprise

    version of the vanishing-photo app with which iPhone users sent over

    one billion vanishing photos in just one year? We ask this not because

    brands should be in the business of sexting, but because, five years

    after the launch of the Apple App Store, the watershed moment that

    gave business entre to the defining gadget of the 21St century, the

    enterprise has yet to really crack the code on mobile development.

    Snapchat. Instagram. Words With Friends. Draw Something. Whats

    App. It seems like a new app goes viral every week, giving some

    previously unknown dudes in co-op workspace a valuation beyond

    their wildest dreams. For brands trying to figure out the mobile space,

    the opposite has been true. Despite entering the mobile game with

    massive consumer awareness and trust, big companies have had a

    difficult time getting consumers to welcome them on to their Android

    and iOS devices.

    Back in 2011, Deloitte found that 80 percent of branded apps

    struggled to get even 1,000 downloads. That was a grim headline for

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    mobile marketing operations and, over time, theres not much to

    suggest things have changed. Breakout branded appsand were

    excluding those created by media companies that have an unfair legup over marketers of dog food and insurance policiesare still few

    and far between. How many do you download only to delete them a

    day later when it comes up short on form or functionality? You know,

    the airline app that wont allow you to book a flight; the rental car app

    thats just a link to the company

    website thatcurses!isnt

    optimized for mobile and wont

    remember your 23-digit usernumber; the diaper brand

    doohickey that doesnt do, well,

    anything. Can you name five

    branded apps you use regularly?

    How about threeand well spot

    you Nike and Starbucks? The

    same goes for apps developed for

    employees. The app stores are

    littered with poorly-reviewed and little-used apps that were meant to

    help out folks who take orders, make sales, and generally keep the

    enterprise rolling.

    The point is this: For even the most sophisticated companies, mobile

    app strategy remains a work in progress. Big budgets, flashy agencies

    and development shops, and enormous amounts of customer data allhave done little to make a dent in the consumer apathy. Whats to

    blame? Well, you have to remember the mobile revolution is only five

    years in the making. It naturally takes enterprises some time to figure

    out the realm of the possible and then make it happen.

    But lets not let enterprises totally off the hook. Its fair to say that too

    many have tripped over their own feet as theyve struggled to organize

    around mobile. A case in point is lingering ambiguity around a centralorganizational question: Who should own mobile app strategy? The

    CMO, served by an increasingly left-brained marketing department

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    and an ever growing array of agencies? Or should the CIO, the tradi-

    tional buyer of technology and maintainer of servers and intranet, rule

    the roost?

    Thats the question weve asked a

    number of leading thinkers to

    ponder in this eBook. The answer

    matters in no small part because

    marketing and IT come with two very

    different sets of baggage. If either

    side is to win the mobile game theyllhave to change and become more

    like the other.

    Our books structure is simple. First

    well discuss the respective cases for the CMO, and CIO before

    concluding with some ways that eschew those legacy power struggles.

    The case study there is a company you might have heard ofWalmart.

    We begin our study with the C-suite denizen who at this moment

    timeand if you blink, it might changeseems to be sitting in the

    catbird seat.

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    When we caught up with Amy Kavanaugh in early March, the VP-public

    affairs and engagement at Taco Bell was still in the whirlwind of a new

    product launch. The lustily-awaited Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco had

    arrived in stores a day later than expected and the fast food equiva-

    lent of a riot erupted around the internet. The new menu item is the

    next beefy/cheesy chapter in whats turning out to be a storybook

    marriage between Taco Bell and Frito Lay. Its already yielded the

    Doritos Locos taco, an historic product launch that sold at a rate of

    almost one million per day in 2012. Riding its spicy shell, the Yum

    Brands brand has become the fast feeder to watch as it plans to open

    2,000 new restaurants over the next decade. Things are moving

    muy rapido at Taco Bell and the mobile experience is no excep-

    tion.

    Agile is our middle name, said Kavanaugh, referring to the project

    development methodology preferred by many top software compa-nies and, increasingly, on corporate campuses far from Silicon Valley.

    Taco Bell, which offers a fairly basic app with store locator and gift

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    card functionality as well as menu and nutritional informational, is

    now in preliminary testing of a mobile ordering experience and has

    just signed an agreement with Cardfree, the mobile merchantplatform. Why? Mobile ordering is what the consumer wants and Taco

    Bell, according to Kavanaugh, has made the shift from an advertising-

    led company to an insights-led

    one.

    That shift means one thing for

    mobile app strategy. If youre

    driving an insights brand andresponding to and co-creating

    experience with consumers and

    identifying their needs, then this

    is a function that should sit in

    marketing.

    Kavanaugh is part of a growing

    chorus that favors a marketing-

    led mobile app strategy. Market-

    ters, the argument goes, own the

    consumer insights and the brand experience, and therefore should

    oversee the increasingly important mobile app channel. But bearing

    this responsibility augurs a new reality for marketing departments.

    They have to become more tech-savvy and comfortable with building

    and maintaining a rigorous development roadmap. Suddenly theyremaking softwarea long way from the days when marketing was all

    about outsourcing ad campaigns to Madison Ave agencies.

    When I started in marketing, it was the arts and crafts department,

    said Brian Kardon, CMO of Lattice Engines, which offers big data

    analytics for sales and marketing departments. We did the logos, the

    colors of the website, the branding. Now its all left brain. Everyone on

    my team is a digital native. They know about HTML, search, how tobuild an app. Increasingly in bigger companies you have marketing

    technologists embedded.

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    The rise of the marketing technologistor creative technologist in

    many an agencys lingoshows just how far weve come in blurring

    the lines between what used to be two very distinct departments,skillsets, and worldviews. The marketing department needs people

    who get techand vice versa.

    Scott Brinker, CTO at Ion Interactive

    and proprietor of the ChiefMarTech

    blog, has been studying this dynamic

    for years. He believes that market-

    ing has to own the experience and todo that they have to take responsib-

    lility for the technology.

    Its logical that marketing is respon-

    sible for mobile app strategy, but

    this comes with a caveat that echoes

    throughout many of the other

    conversations we had. Marketers have to earn it by really immersing

    their organizations in technology.

    I dont think it works when marketing sketches out the experience

    and throws it over the fence for IT or some third party to build, he

    said. Marketing folks dont even know whats possible with the tech-

    nology just as tech folks might not understand how it impacts experi-

    ence. You need someone on the team who speaks both languages.

    Who marketers partner with is another important factor in how

    successful theyll be in owning mobile. Forrester analyst Michael

    Facemire observed that the digital agencies once best known for

    design acumen are getting better at working with backend technology,

    helping apps with sharply-designed front ends add more functionality

    and value through connections with the vast amounts of data present

    in the enterprise. The association could help CMOs gain tech credibil-

    ity.

    The CMO is trying to branch out and not just be about pretty pictures

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    anymore, Facemire said. I can reach out and work with folks who

    have technical chops, who are not just pretty-picture guys but can

    work with back-end systems as well. This can become a commonground.

    Another common ground can be Agile development, the project

    management philosophy that may end up being the Esperanto of a

    properly integrated marketing-

    tech world, only, unlike Espe-

    eranto, people actually use it.

    At Mindjet, the San Francisco-

    based creator of work manage-

    ement software, the marketing

    department has adopted a

    version of Agile that has them

    operating in three-week sprints.

    When we sit down with an

    engineering team, were more

    effective because we all speak the

    same language, said Mindjet CMO Jascha Kaykas-Wolff.

    Adopting Agile is part and parcel of the changes that have washed

    over the marketing business that as for decades acclimated to long

    planning cycles and communications strategies that were hatched

    behind closed doors and shoved out into the world with little if anyroom adapting to customer feedback.

    Agile is about fast sprints, testing and learning, iterating and reiterat-

    ing. Said Kaykas-Wolff, The idea of having a big campaign, pumping a

    bunch of media against and then pulling it down six months later

    doesnt really work. You have to operate differently and one of the

    models to pull from is software deployment.

    To his mind, marketers shouldnt be automatically handed responsibil-

    ity for mobile. They have to earn it by educating themselves and

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    showing that they get how software is made rather than try important

    ways of thinking and doing from old marketing models.

    If you approach mobile strategy like it's a bunch of campaigns youre

    destined for failure. You have to be empathetic to how you develop

    and deploy software. If you're not, then you're in a horrible position to

    raise your hand to take over mobile strategy.

    Until about eight months ago, Mindjets mobile operations was led by

    the product team. Now its organized by a steering committee for

    mobile comprised of a number of senior executives including the headof product and Kaykas-Wolff. Injecting marketing and other functions

    into the mobile development process ensured that Mindjet began to

    better focus on its paying customers and even led to a new product.

    Over time, Kaykas-Wolff said marketing may end up owning app

    strategy. Or it may not. In any event, ownership doesnt preclude

    collaboration with other parts of the enterprise, least of all IT. And, no

    matter the organization, there are things that IT just does better.

    There are requirements in terms of privacy protection and security-

    things that I would have no business being involved in, Kavanaugh

    said. They are important for brand and consumer protection. That is

    driven by the back-end, a really strong IT team and partnership.

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    Theres good news and bad news for the CIO who wants to ownmobile strategy. Lets get the bad news out of the way.

    Mobile success requires speed and openness to a more iterative way

    of doing things. With mobile, youre constantly issuing updates,

    optimizing, perfecting and innovating. Unfortunately, CIOs and the IT

    organizations they oversee are historical symbols of corporate slow-

    ness. You dont look to IT for innovation. You look to IT to keep things

    up and running.

    The office of the CIO was never thought of as an innovation center,

    said Facemire, of Forrester. Its been perceived as a cost center

    hoping to get stuff done at a containable cost.

    This is a perception that, rightly or wrongly, has lingered. Most people

    we talked to dont think that your average CIO is cut out for the job, a

    number that includes some of their own.

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    I'm heavily biased that the marketer should own it, said Jim ONeill,

    CIO of HubSpot, a marketing SaaS company based in Cambridge,

    Mass. IT is there to help the business. IT should help with the build-out or with sourcing the engineering development, but only at the

    direction of the CMO. The legacy power struggles need to go away.

    Heres the good news. There are

    indications that CIOs are taking on a

    broader role within their organiza-

    tions, that they are no longer mere

    shepherds of a just-say-slow ITdepartment. A 2012 survey from

    Gartner captured the change roiling

    this geeky corner of the C-suite.

    Seventy-seven percent of CIOs

    interviewed said they have responsi-

    bilities beyond IT, compared to just

    50 percent four years before. IT management, until recently the be-all

    and end-all of the job, now ranks a paltry sixth on a list of priorities

    thats topped by analytics and business intelligence and mobile tech-

    nologies. Sure, CIOs are still called upon to oversee security, virtualiza-

    tion, CRM and legacy modernization, but theyre increasingly tasked

    with building new channels and markets.

    Chris Silva, an analyst at Altimeter Group, breaks the recent history of

    the CIO role into three phases. In the first, the CIO intensely focusedon his own backlog and lost track of what consumers were doing

    tech-wise. This was followed by a period of disintermediation during

    which enterprises went with line of business-led initiatives that often

    ended up with purchases off-the-shelf solutions. Were just entering a

    third phase thats a result of dissatisfaction of those solutions. And

    were playing catch up to consumers.

    I haven't been able to quantify this in data points, but over the pastsix months or so the tide is shifting back toward the CIO, Silva told us.

    CIOs are caught up. They know whats needed: building platforms

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    across the organization so that everyone can benefit from mobile in a

    way thats consistent and fully funded and resourced.

    Facemire said this is changing

    how CIOs think of their jobs. The

    CIO, he said, is trying to pivot

    and become the chief digital

    officer and become the center of

    not only information but of digital

    interaction.

    And of course theres no way to

    think of digital interaction without

    thinking of mobile. With the

    number of mobile devices set to

    exceed the worlds population,

    were not going out on a limb in

    saying that understanding mobile

    is a key part of the CIOs future.

    But how can he or she put an elbow to the ribs of the CMO humble-

    bragging about how he owns consumer insights and user experience?

    The CIO does hold one card here: the employee. Its important to not

    forget that an important user base for apps is to be found in the

    workforce and the CIO has, for a long time now, been charged with

    designing a technology experience just for that audience. As workersof all kindsfrom salespeople to community managers to waiters-

    get more mobile, they need devices that combine the friendly interace

    of a consumer product with the back-end functionality that allows

    them to dip into enterprise systems where necessary.

    Happily, the CIO has already been trying to make this marriage

    happen as he confronts the consumerization of IT, which, put simply,

    means what technology an employee uses in the workplace will beinformed by the choices he makes as a consumer. Although you might

    issue staff a Blackberry, Dell Inspiron and an Outlook account,

    With the number of mobiledevices set to exceed theworlds population, were notgoing out on a limb in sayingthat understanding mobile is a

    key part of the CIOs future

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    employees are actually using an Android, an iPad and Gmail. Its a

    trend that has any number of implications for HR, IT and legal depart-

    ments. One effect of the Bring Your Own Device phenomenon is thatits forced CIOs to better understand how workforces use technology

    and thats a good first step to understanding what consumers are

    doing. Its given topics like good design and usability a higher profile.

    Another advantage that CIOs also

    bring is a different mindset to

    bear when it comes to metrics. In

    the worst cases, marketers canget snagged on soft but sexy

    metricssay the number of

    reviews and stars in the App

    Storeand lose sight of bigger

    questions.

    IT shouldn't give up on metrics

    like security or process support

    simply to serve marketers'

    metrics, said Altimeters Silva. You can take great expertise from

    serving customers and use 90 percent of that, but serving customers is

    probably going to be different from serving folks internally. Are you

    solving a user problem? If you're not or you're not focused on that,

    you're wasting your time and your money.

    Among the keys to success for the CIO, according to one information

    chief who prefers to remain anonymous, is not leading with technol-

    ogy and speaking the language of business objectives. Hiring IT people

    with broad technology stack knowledge who can sit comfortably next

    to marketing and design people on cross-functional teams also

    helpsas does a mindset that allows innovation to flourish through-

    out the organization.

    Even an empowered CIO is faced with an unfortunate reality: no

    matter how expansively you view your role, a good chunk of the job is

    IT shouldnt give up on metricslike security or process supportsimply to serve marketersmetrics

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    about keeping the operation running and managing an endless project

    list. To a degree, this CIO remains a service provider who doesnt

    wholly control her own agenda. Innovation is often far down the listunless theres a budget set aside for it. But that doesnt mean innova-

    tion isnt going on elsewhere in the organizationin other corporate

    functions or at the business units. When that happens, whats a CIO to

    do? Snuff it out and stay true to a command-and-control notion of IT

    or let so-called shadow IT bloom?

    The answer to some degree is a barometer of how well this CIO is cut

    out to run mobile app strategy and other operations that are inher-ently forward-thinking.

    Fighting this sort of shadow IT is not a prescription for success, said

    our anonymous CIO. I allow it to thrive and allow seedlings to hatch

    out in the business units. Its an effective backdoor way for me to fund

    and create innovation. I dont blow the whistle, or stomp my feet. I

    nurture it and advocate for it. Ultimately that's going to come back to

    me. It will come under my ownership. Im better served in leading from

    behind.

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    Ben Galbraith laughed lightly as he states his position on our CMO-CIOquestion.

    I'm an engineer by background, so my response is predictable, said

    the VP-global products at Walmart.com. I struggle to see why giving a

    marketing guy control over a software product makes any sense at

    all.

    After dismantling our entire thesis, Galbraith was kind enough to walkthrough the logic with us. It kind of felt like making a guy used to

    driving a Porsche take your pre-owned Hyundai out for a test spin. You

    see, Walmart does things differently than most Fortune 100 whose

    roots arent in technology. A company that began in the final year of

    the Second World War has made itself into a tech player, establishing

    Walmart Global eCommerce, which in the companys own words

    combines the small structure and nimble nature of a startup with the

    resources of the worlds largest retailer. In short, Global eCommerce

    supplies the ginormous retailers business units with software

    solutions. Youve probably read about Walmart Labs, the incubator

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    behind innovations like Polaris, the companys own search engine.

    Were very much a software technology operation, Galbraith said,making a crucial observation. Fashioning yourself a software company

    means youre relentlessly focused on innovation and, rather than

    worry about old organizational silos,

    youre keeping the consumer at the

    center of things. It also means that

    discussion around how legacy roles

    can be updated doesnt much apply.

    For us, Galbraith said, the notion

    of marketing people owning the

    software is ridiculous but it's as

    ridiculous as the IT people owning

    the software.

    So the CMO or CIO question is no longer really a relevant one, though

    as recently as two years ago it might have been because Walmart.com

    had fewer product people in its ranks. Now, he said, the answer to

    the question on both sides is no. We need someone who's focused on

    end-to-end customer experience. For us it's actually two people. One

    who's focused on it from a business perspective and one who's

    focused on it from a product perspective.

    Asked whether this sort of thing is feasible for companies smaller thanWalmartwhich is to say almost every company in the worldGalbraith

    acknowledged the efficiencies that Walmart gets from its

    global girth. Its easier to amortize the R&D when youre a global

    player. Before you sniff that whats good for Bentonville cant help

    your own 25-person shop, remember that there are still lessons here

    that are universally applicable. The first is that laser focus on the

    customer and her needs and desires. The second is putting software

    people in charge of software development. This is what is reallybehind those calls for more a technologically-savvy marketing depart-

    ment.

    BEFORE AFTER

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    In the final analysis, it may end up that Walmarts experience is more

    widely applicable than you might think. Thats not to say your small or

    medium enterprise is going to find a pot of gold that will allow you toplow untold millions into proprietary software development. Even if

    youre still buying off-the-shelfsomething Galbraith said Walmart

    would do more of if only off-the-shelf was bettertheres a point to be

    made here. In the end, neither marketing nor tech has to end up

    owning mobile. It is not preordained. And a lot of companies are

    talking about cross-functional constructions that include not only the

    marketing and tech but also legal, HR and other functions where need

    be.

    The CIO and the CMO are in the best case ceding their power in equal

    amounts to a center of excellence that is comprised of resources from

    both shops, ideally, that is leading mobile throughout the organiza-

    tion, said Altimeters Chris Silva. Theyre doing the work and acting as

    a tiger team, asking how do we make sure we're doing it right and how

    are we cross-pollinating what we're doing on the inside? They've

    realized building the wheel five times doesn't help anybody.

    Perhaps the CIO vs. CMO smackdown shouldnt be a smackdown at all.

    Youve got to take the versus out, said Taco Bells Kavanaugh, speak-

    ing like a true purveyor of Doritos-Taco Bell mash-ups. Nothing works

    in isolation anymore.

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    Matt Creamer is a writer and editor

    based in New York City. He has

    written for Ad Age, where he is

    editor at large, The Awl, The Atlantic,

    the New York Daily News, The New

    York Observer and other publica-

    tions. He tweets at @matt_creamer.

    Written by:

    Jake McKibben &Miguel Gaydosh

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