Connecting with today’s consumers who are constantly bombarded with media is no easy task. To engage customers in our digitally-focused world, sales and marketing departments must team up to create campaigns that can cut through the noise. This collaboration is changing the “front office” we know into a connected, fluid environment.
To learn more about the future of the front office and how marketing and sales will continue to change in the future, we spoke with Jason Galloway, Marketing Transformation and Technology Practice Lead at KPMG. KPMG recently released Marketing to the Connected Customer – a report that focuses on how organizations must focus on six key areas to be successful in this changing environment.
“The front office as a whole has had to, and is continuing to, change on how they interact with customers,” said Galloway. Traditionally, there have been silos between marketing, sales, and services, but now customers are demanding seamless experiences that are driving these six areas of focus.
“Data, analytics, automation, culture, work structure, and metrics,” are the six essential elements identified in the report, explained Galloway. Data now needs to be viewed as a corporate asset by all teams, advanced analytics and automation can be leveraged to create better campaigns, and marketing takes on a larger function to connect with customers.
“The question now becomes, what does that mean for marketing? Marketing really needs to change to live in this new world,” Galloway said. According to the report, 54 percent of marketers believe their roles will include collaborating with IT, sales, and finance in the future – and they are right. For the future marketer to be successful in connecting with customers, breaking down data and organizational silos are important.
“When we say future office, we aren’t saying this is going to happen or be in place tomorrow,” explained Galloway. “When we go into most companies we still find that we have a distinct marketing organization and a distinct customer service organization. What needs to happen is that these internal stakeholders need to work in a much more interconnected way.” Sales, marketing departments, and organizations can use these findings to connect with customers and increase organizational collaboration. The future of marketing, and the front office as a whole, will rely on connection and collaboration.
Interested in learning more? Click here.
