I had the great privilege of hosting a not-to-be-missed webinar this week with Cat Dutton, Deputy CMO, Atos, and Matt Preschern, CMO at NTT Ltd, to explore the theme of ‘Business-as-Unusual’ and what that means to marketers.
With Gartner predicting that, by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels, it’s key that marketers understand the opportunity and align their strategies with what McKinsey and others are calling the ‘Great Acceleration’ – happening across key industries – in order to survive.
My colleague, Nat Sones, Head of Strategy at Agent3, opened by looking at how, in an accelerated world, we are emerging into a ‘Never Normal’ scenario of perpetual change. This drove a discussion of how technology CMOs can stay at the forefront of their businesses, drive progress and foster growth, underpinned by digital transformation.
Together the team broke down the idea of what an ‘accelerated’ world means, from impacts on business in general, on marketing as a discipline, on specific industry verticals (Telcos, FinServ, Retail and Manufacturing), and on customer engagement. It was a great insight into the opportunities for CMOs in enterprise technology who want to best align their strategies with the ‘Great Acceleration’ that is happening across major industries due to the impact of the pandemic and complex digitisation, platform and ecosystem strategies.
Excitingly, we got a great insight into the real-world challenges and strategies of CMOs in two very different organisations, as Cat and Matt explored how they are leading their teams at Atos and NTT to address some of the challenges framed. We discussed some great topics such as: measuring Marketing’s impact, and what KPIs matter today; how to address the perennial challenge of budgeting; and also where marketing now sits organizationally and the role it must play in driving whole-business strategy and creating a cross-business engine for enterprise customer lifecycles, growth, and success.
It was a fascinating discussion, relevant for any B2B marketer who is struggling to make sense of their priorities, and value, in the new world reality that we find ourselves in.
If you missed it the first time, I highly recommend tuning in. To access the webinar and also view the slides, please click here.