If you are a busy marketer, or work anything like Salesforce’s APAC Chief Marketing Officer who all throughout a week has a parade of marketing team people reporting updates to him, you may find something useful here.

The folks at CXpose.tech are big on productivity. Each person may be wearing three to four hats at once, so ensuring lines of communication do not cross and that we get the messaging across and as accurately as possible the first time around, is imperative.

How do people from diverse backgrounds driven by different motivations converge around the same page to work together towards big common goals? I find this question to be especially relevant for myself, having worked with different teams across the variety of endeavors that I have.

And it is similar for many others who find themselves in the meetings (offline or online) with various other different departments in an organization.

Marketing leads the AI charge

At some point, the conversation turned towards AI and an interesting revelation emerged. Marketers have been at the forefront of AI due to the amount of real-time data that exists in the marketing technology landscape. The amount of real-time data this function collects may far exceed that of other parts of the business.

For example, there is digital web behavior, app behavior, and even Internet of Things data piped in from strategically placed sensors, for example at physical stores. This is just the tip of the iceberg. 

“That whole process for any CMO of understanding what is going on in the company, is like a pageant – there is a parade of people presenting the work they have done, and most of the week can be spent talking to the internal leadership team about what you have done for the week.”

And as more systems have cloud-versions of themselves developed, it can be easier for marketers to consolidate their data estate. An example of an outcome from this consolidation is the recommendation engine that organizations like Amazon and Salesforce are well-known for. 

When an organization forms work teams into cross-functional units, solutions like Slack facilitate their work with channels and integrate key systems so that data can be ‘collected’ and made accessible by the different parties as a single version of truth for the whole organization.

Best practices for marketers and marketing leaders

Rather than go to our little nook to work and then report about it at the end of a month, more company employees are adopting an open work culture whereby there is a shared and open space. Derek described it as, “You can see people’s work as they are working.”

For marketing leaders, let’s say a CMO, the perspective changes. Over 150 people have to give updates to Salesforce’s APAC CMO, and Derek said. “That whole process for any CMO of understanding what is going on in the company, is like a pageant – there is a parade of people presenting the work they have done, and most of the week can be spent talking to the internal leadership team about what you have done for the week.”

This can be what a typical work week looks like for most marketers and employees overall, which does not leave much time or room for them to be productive.

To overcome this, Derek shared that ‘enlightened’ organizations have shifted to an asynchronous work model where there are high trust relationships with their teams and agencies. 

SUMMARY

Tech-enabled platforms are offering transparency as well as efficient collection of data. This can offer a single version of truth  that facilitates even greater and more effective collaboration for work teams across a business.