IT and marketing often play the blame game. IT has a lot on its plate. Cloud computing, process automation, infrastructure etc. Marketing Automation is usually not a priority. Marketers and IT professionals often do not speak the same 'language', which makes it challening to communicate. Then again: IT is often brought in at the last minute.
A Marketing Resource Management solution can tie individual reporting systems together. It can provide data integritity and normalization in the use of marketing assets, without making large investments or taking up much resources and time of the existing IT department.
Bringing IT up-to-speed in an early stage of a project is a good idea. Before you talk to them, be prepared for the following questions:
- How does an MRM solution relate to existing web communities within the company?
- Is it a hosted solution?
- Is it a standard solution?
- Does it require on-site installation or client side software?
- On what kind of technology is it build?
- Is it a point solution? (see: difference between point solutions and MRM solutions)
- How is the data stored, transmitted and protected?
- Does the solution require a separate login procedure?
- Who is in charge of user management?
Even better: talk to them and they might just have a list of questions for you to discuss with your vendor. In any case: don't wait until the launch date to get them aboard.