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I spoke yesterday with Liz Miller, vice president of global programs and operations, at the CMO Council; and Michael Svilar, global director of the marketing analytic group at Accenture Interactive, about the report's findings. The most surprising elements to us included the low level of confidence in leveraging the marketing and communication opportunities in digital channels, as well as the deep divide that still plagues many organizations--both in how the departments are organized, as well as the lack of data integration.

Some of the findings include: just 4 percent of more than 300 marketing executives and 7 percent of the more than 300 IT executives said their companies are very prepared to exploit digital marketing channels; only 8 percent of marketers and 6 percent of IT executives said they believe their data and analytics are completely integrated; and 29 percent of marketers and 27 percent of IT executives said they are having difficulty integrating critical analytics capabilities.

"Some things that came up continuously seem to be a governance divide," Miller said of the report. "Where is that hand shake and where is the expertise that both organizations bring to the table?"

Miller cited a priority shift happening in organizations. The role of the CMO is becoming more complex, with mandates to drive and grow revenue and to architect the customer experience, while IT in organizations is becoming more complex. "The savvy marketer and CIO certainly see the opportunity in collaborating rather than digging in their heels and fighting."

Svilar said that to close the gap, the whole organization needs to embrace change. "Getting the whole C-suite involved is the key component to what will make this successful," he said.

However, with only 20 percent of IT and marketing executives saying their companies are heavily invested in digital marketing, fostering enterprisewide change may be a long way off. "The majority of IT executives spearhead the digital agenda [at their companies]. I think that it has to be a collaborative effort. It has to be a strategy that IT can help and collaborate and provide some real expertise on how we can leverage and exploit these channels. And from IT's experience, marketing can bring that customer engagement perspective," Miller said.

While marketing and IT struggle with collaboration and agility, Svilar predicts that the increased usage of analytics will help to drive the groups together. "This will bring synergies to the relationship that will be helpful," Svilar said.

And Miller added that we will eventually start to see that gap closing as analytics come into play and the online and offline channels become more dependent on each other. "We'll see different things that challenge the relationship between marketing and IT from a tactical point, but the big challenge is around the analytics and aggregating the view of the customers and creating an actionable roadmap for everyone to really follow."