That’s a question that’s becoming increasingly difficult for companies to answer -- and for IT executives to navigate.
If major lines of business flow through e-commerce, then sales, marketing, and IT must come together in a working relationship. Their joint goals include designing and maintaining a user-friendly Website experience for customers at the same time that front- and back-end business processes and databases are tightly integrated and fully secured.
Reservation systems are a prime example of how this collaboration works. Airlines, hotels, and car rental agencies step customers through online, self-service systems that assist with locating the right options and price points. Information returned to customers is usually pulled from mainframe databases that are integrated by IT into a series of Web services that link internal and external resources to make the entire sequence of events run seamlessly.
Throughout this process, multiple levels of security need to be negotiated -- and if the process design changes because of an interest in altering the customer experience, the back-end supporting processes and integration are also likely to be affected.
Despite relying on IT expertise, Website projects are anything but clear-cut for IT, because they are front-facing and represent the company’s brand and/or sales channels in the online world.
Indeed, many organizations have already learned the hard way that IT doesn’t possess the best set of skills for producing the kind of pleasing “look, feel, and use” Websites that are now expected by online customers. Consequently, it is likely to be marketing and sales departments that select Website designers to assist in development. The catch comes when IT gets called to the scene to integrate back-end data bases, cement security, and ensure that company business rules and processes are programmed into the front-end Website.
This makes it imperative for IT to work collaboratively and continuously with sales and marketing -- from the time Websites are conceptualized, through phases of maintenance and reinvention. The key areas of concern for IT managers are maintaining good working relationships with sales and marketing counterparts and placing the right IT talent on the front lines of conceptual design.
It is also important to choose the right IT team leader for the project. Often, this talent is not IT’s best software engineer or database administrator, though such selections are mistakes IT pros commonly make. Instead, the best choice may be a business analyst with good listening skills who is able to see the Website as a marketer does -- and be able to translate this into terms that make sense to IT.
All of this begins to make the Website seem like a marketing-driven project. But is it?
IT can be considered to be the “engine room” that moves the ship forward with core skills in project management, vendor management and SLAs (service level agreements), system design, integration, test and deployment, Website-metrics capture and reporting, disaster recovery and failover, security, and new online technologies. Marketing rightly focuses on branding and messaging strategies and deployment, including implementation of an effective content management system with input from IT.
Nowhere is the IT/marketing collaboration more keenly obvious than in corporate audits of the Website. “Security and compliance within the organization touch on all departments, from information technology and human resources to marketing,” said Stuart Chontos-Gilchrist, CEO of audit firm E3 Technology. “In most organizations, marketing is responsible for Website design, creation, and maintenance. We audit security and e-commerce policies and transaction logs in IT, and then we cross the building to visit with marketing to ensure that all messaging and content is in compliance with industry regulations. IT is typically a central Website focal point, but a Website audit focused solely on IT does not cover every base.”
The bottom line is that IT in a majority of organizations is the driving force behind most Websites -- although it is marketing that is and should be the “voice.” The necessary prominence of that voice and the need for highly focused inter-departmental collaboration are what distinguishes Website project management from other IT applications work. This factors into the thinking of the best CIOs and IT managers when they set Website project direction.
IT and Marketing MUST work together to create a great looking but dynamically functional site. The prime example of a failure is the old My Coke Rewards site. It looked pretty (but had too much "Coca-Cola Red."), had all sorts of Flash animation and movement (I think the entire site was Flash and not Java Script), but it choked at DSL 3.0 speeds! Maybe it did better at broadband or other 6.0 and up speeds, but regardless, it should not have been that slow or difficult to load!
So after two years, they finally fixed it. The new version, is much cleaner and bolder with larger images and less "Coca-Cola Red." Plus it operates well at the slowest DSL speed (I think 786 bps?). It doesn't take me an hour to enter my 10 codes a day like it used to. (Now it's limited to 120 points a week, so I can enter as many codes as I want until I hit that total).
As I mentioned before in another post, my company's old web site was built by an Internet marketing company that seemed to be all engineers with no input from any designers. They made a functional site, but with only minimal input allowed from us (no, we can't do that). When finished, it looked OK, but wasn't exciting. Images were everywhere and it was longer than the dead sea scrolls.
Additionally, as times changed, the site became invisible to search engines. Our company hired a well recommended person who was an expert at web programming and had a good design background. He also hated the egotistical know-it-all title of "Web Guru" that most website administrators use and chose for himself, "Web Content Engineer." He eventually took complete control of the sites from the engineers (are you sure you don't need us to help you?) and made the new sites both dynamic and good to look at. Also, one of his site building precepts was to build the site like it was going to be opened on a dial up connection, so he always developed his content to load very fast, even the Flash.
Because he consulted with the Art Department, it was a site that fit our printed matter and color scheme, but didn't necessarily follow it completely and get cluttered by it.
Because he consulted the Marketing department, he knew how to build the search criteria so that we could be found without paying ad fees. He made us #3 on page 1 of one Google search keyword in less than 6 months on the job which we never got with the engineers after 4 years and $100k.
It is imperative that IT and Marketing work hand in hand to create the fully functional site. Egos must be put aside for it is for the benefit of all.
Great post Mary... I have had my share of quandrum managing program for corporate web sites. It gets complicated when you have b2b, b2c, line of business apps and general corporate website. Each has different agenda. Having a monthly review with all stake holders raises awareness but it necessarily does not solve the problem.
Corporate website is about managing brand image and vision of the company as a whole.
B2C website is about managing customer transactions and communications for a certain line of business or all line of business that the customer has brought products.
B2B websites is about managing supply chain and distribution again for a single line of business or all lines but still quite a different view than a customer view.
So each one of them should right fully have different priorities to achieve their goals but somehow has to move as single entity. These problems do exist even for any internal applications, but when we have an external facing entity like website, it shows up in the radar very soon. Your customers and business partners experience it much quicker than if it was in a internal process. It kinda chimes with "Think Globally, Act Locally" slogan. I agree with Mike, it is not an easy task.
The complications occur when Marketing begins to define Web metrics and looks for reporting on them. Then, IT necessarily must enter the picture--or at least, it usually does.
The other management areas are Website security, performance and mitigation procedures when something goes wrong. Again, IT shines in these areas.
You can only determine who 'owns' the website, if you know the goals the website is to achieve. If it is only a work of art like the sculpture in front of the Head Office main door, then it doesn't really matter who owns it.
If however, the website is seen as the online portal for all communications between a corporation and its stakeholder groups, then we have a much tougher gordian knot to cut through. As usual, if you are going to manage this process, then you must have measures of what is being achieved. I'm sure that marketing will have a much bigger influence on that than those IT guys.
Exactly! Because the web presence for a company is more than just look and feel, cutting edge technology, and rapid response. Dabbling in social networking on the company site for some companies could prove to be a boon, but for others, an unmitigated disaster.
IT ultimately has the risk management job--but setting the acceptable risk level is outside of their domain. While they must consult with their business function colleagues and provide the best advice, they must be open to an understanding of why some risk may be better than others. And then manage the risk the best that they can, including the rest of the infrastructure and services not tied directly to a given "web project".
Who owns the website, Marketing or IT? The real answer is yes, you might say, along with finance, service, manufacturing, sales, HR, legal, and everybody else.
The days of unilateral decision-making are rapidly disappearing.
A tougher game, indeed--with all the same dynamics, only more.
I've talked with IT mangers who just plain would love to give the Website entirely to the users!!--But alas, there is too much technology, coupled with controls, security, etc., that make it a tough giveaway.
It gets even more complicated when you factor in the rest of the organizations as well. Does the customer service "website" need to maintain a consistent look and feel when it is delivering a completely differnt set of messages, content, or applications.
Operations can get a little excited if you mess with their supply chain by changing a policy on an extranet that suddenly takes down the order interface of a large supplier for instance.
IT has learned these lessons before. Ask any business function who owns the applications that they use, and I'm pretty sure they won't say it is IT.
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