Does IT continue to slow online marketing?

I am reading a very interesting white paper today on “10 Key Marketing Trends in 2010″ which covers the overall adoption of online marketing strategies in small business.  Number 9  jumped out and hit me on the side of head and something that at one time in my life was very near and dear to me.  Last week when I was at Spring Training For Business in Arizona with MSP business coach Stuart Selbst I mentioned during my lunch presentation on exactly this topic.

IT Bottlenecks Drive adoption of on Demand Marketing solutions

In this published report (you can download here) the author report on the disconnect between IT and Marketing, especially how IT and marketing are not seeing eye to eye on the whole online marketing momentum.  The marketing folks see IT as a complex bottleneck and IT sees marketing/sales as an expense or risk to the organization.  To be completely candid in my opinion, no wonder so many small business IT shops are horrible in their own marketing efforts and struggle with this important part of business.

Also in the report, the author identifies how more and more marketing folks are starting to use software as a service (SaaS) offerings where the IT departments, MSP or IT Pro are bypassed and not involved in the process of choosing a solution.  67% of those surveyed complained about their IT service provider (or in-house IT) and are moving towards other online or web-based solutions to bypass the complexities put in place by IT and also the high costs demanded by some technology firms.  Marketing solutions are moving towards the “on demand” model vs. the old on-premise models.  These include social media platforms, CRM solutions and even email technologies.

By the way, how does IT respond – they invest in more complex solutions to block applications or web services, building more of a separation in the organization.

During Spring Training I mentioned to the group that consulting with their clients on marketing and removing the barriers will bring additional value to those they serve and position them truly as a business consultant and not just another techy firm.  This is why Ulistic launched the Ulistic Partner Program to help those Managed Services Providers and IT consultants help serve their clients in a different way and with services they are looking for.