Chief information officers at drug companies want IT to be more closely aligned with marketing, but chief marketing officers are less likely to agree, according to a new survey conducted by Accenture.
About 90% of 22 CIOs at pharmaceutical companies with more than $55 billion in revenue say marketing and IT should be better aligned. Only about 60% of the 24 CMOs who were surveyed agreed. But other priorities for CMOs, such as customer experience, are less likely to be considered a priority for CIOs.
“The industry faces a period of rapid change marked by digital advances, new expectations from health care professionals and patients, and a dominant outcomes-based reimbursement environment,” Anne O’Riordan, senior managing director of Accenture’s life sciences industry group, said in a statement. “This requires CMO-CIO collaboration to increase.”
But it’s unclear how best to integrate the different functions. Almost 40% of CIOs would put IT and marketing staff on one team. Only 13% of the CMOs would do the same thing.
Still, more CMOs and CIOs say that the move toward digital is driving the need for better collaboration.
