For more ecommerce webinars visit us at http://www.elasticpath.com/webinars/archive Bridging the technology vs. marketing divide has gotten easier as the technology landscape has changed-while such changes are helpful, they are not sufficient to completely close the gap. In this one hour webinar, Rob Schmults, CMO of Smart Destinations, and Matt Higgins, CTO of Smart Destinations, will share views on the way changes in enabling technology combined with better organizational collaboration can make your ecommerce business faster, better, and cheaper. Featuring: Rob Schmults, CMO of Smart Destinations, and Matt Higgins, CTO of Smart Destinations

1. Bridging the technology and marketing
divide for ecommerce success
Presented by Smart Destinations’ CTO
Matt Higgins and CMO Rob Schmults
Listen to audio using your computer’s microphone & speakers (VoIP) or dial in:
United Kingdom: +44 (0) 203 318 4024
United States: +1 323 417 4600
Access Code: 468-965-365
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2. Introducing
Elastic Path Software
• Provides an enterprise ecommerce platform, hosting,
full outsourcing, and consulting
• Giving enterprises the flexibility to move between
these models at any time
• #1 ecommerce blog www.getelastic.com
• For more on-demand ecommerce resources:
www.elasticpath.com/resources
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3. Agenda
• A Modern Fairytale
• Marketing Needs to Step Up
• IT Can Do More
• Good News For Everyone
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4. Once Upon a Time…
IT only had to work
with logical, process
driven folks who
understood the value of
fault tolerant systems
Marketing lived in a happy
place where 50% of its
efforts were wasted (but Their two worlds were
no one knew or cared buffered by a handy
which 50%) layer of finance and
operations
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5. Things Changed in a Hurry
• The arrival of the web created the need for
new organizational dynamics
• Skunk works operations to….
spin-outs to….
an integrated sub-department to….
a free-standing business unit
• Very quickly relationships between IT and
marketing changed forcing a high degree of
collaboration
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6. Collaboration or When Worlds Collide?
View from “IT” View from “Marketing”
– Rolling 90 day plan – Short term focus
– Change = Risk – “Do it/Fix it”
– Enterprise systems – Enterprise systems are
rightly get top priority utilities
– IT a cost (and blame) –IT a gate keeper (almost
center as bad as legal)
– See Marketing as fickle, –IT is slow, a source of
prone to overpromising, unnecessary complexity
and not held accountable
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7. The Challenge for Both Marketing and IT
• Web raised expectations of executives and
customers to new heights
• Growing source of profits dependent on a
whole new set of systems that move at an
unprecedented pace
• While legacy systems and channels still need
to be supported
– increasingly integrated with online
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8. Agenda
• A Modern Fairytale
• Marketing Needs to Step Up
• IT Can Do More
• Good News For Everyone
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9. Marketing Needs to Sharpen its Game
Not easy to beat reality into submission
• Cannot afford to be ignorant of how
development and delivery works
• Building is ceasing to be equated with running
a web store
• It is now possible to understand which 50% is
wasted – so focus on what matters
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10. Why Are Projects Always Late?
• Andersen study showed that 50% of projects
are OVER 50% late and over-budget
• Easy to point fingers at IT
• Two main areas projects get derailed:
– Up-front requirements ill-defined
– Scope change during project
Spend the time to get clear on what you want,
and get clarity on the impact of changes to
scope (ask if they are worth it)
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11. Building vs. Running: Shiny Objects
• Arms Race Mentality
"Gap's new sites leapfrog every other retail site out
there today," said Carrie Johnson, a retail analyst
with Forrester Research, an online consulting firm.
"They're providing a customer experience that
other retailers will quickly try to figure out how to
copy." – NYT 9/12/2005
– …this leads to “mini-cart mania”
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12. Building vs. Running: Missing What Matters
• Pixels or Inventory?
– A leading apparel brand’s web team focused obsessively
on image pixel counts – a commendable focus on brand
integrity
– Meanwhile no one worked on restocking core sizes of best
sellers
• A dirty store can hurt sales, but
stock-outs eliminate them
• Physical store managers obsess
about inventory and merchandising,
not about upgrading window glass or
installing talking price tags
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13. The Great Cop-out is Over
• World of budget based marketing ending with
marketers increasingly stapled to a bottom
line
• Dev efforts increasingly given the level of
scrutiny marketing campaigns have started to
receive – what is the ROI?
• News used to be just about ecommerce
leaders rising – now they are falling too
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14. Agenda
• A Modern Fairytale
• Marketing Needs to Step Up
• IT Can Do More
• Good News For Everyone
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15. Avoid Us vs. Them
• Marketing not actually the enemy
– If they are, then what does that
make the customer?
• Easier for an engineer to become a marketer
than vice versa, so meet them more than
halfway
• Wear a company hat rather than a silo hat
– Help drive the trade-offs vs. use them as an anchor
– Managing risk still important, but put it onto the
scales or risk/reward rather than blindly guard
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16. IT Cannot Simply Be Order Takers
• Doing exactly is what asked gives a passive
aggressive thrill…but it’s better to be a thought
partner
– What are the goals?
– Force rank priorities
• Proactively help craft achievable requirements
– Clearly articulate the long poles
– Offer alternative paths vs. accepting uninformed
designs
– Change orders are about saying “yes” rather than
“no”
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17. Agenda
• A Modern Fairytale
• Marketing Needs to Step Up
• IT Can Do More
• Good News For Everyone
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18. Landscape Changes
• ASP phenomena: minimize IT involvement
– Lighter weight skill requirements to integrate and
manage
– Support and upgrades someone else’s responsibility
• “Marketing interfaces”
– Technology not just for technologists
– Let marketing serve itself
• Fading of the “shiny object?”
– Recession may have been at least a partial cure for
marketing’s confusion of could with should
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19. Personnel Changes
• Increasingly have people with varied
backgrounds in key roles, lessens myopia
• Contact has breed an understanding, with IT
understanding marketing and (increasingly)
marketing understanding IT
• Elapsed time since Al Gore’s invention allows
for more specialization, expertise, and lessons
learned
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20. How it Works in Practice
• Marketing put product reviews on priority list
• Didn’t micro manage beyond requirements
definition
• IT able to present recommendation that
balance implementation effort and cost with
capability
• Reviews successfully launched within 2 weeks
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21. Q&A
www.elasticpath.com/resources
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