In an ideal world, marketing and sales could implement and troubleshoot their own shiny devices (and the accompanying software), but it ain’t an ideal world. Many times the IT department is the first place staff go to complain, but rarely to give praise. Often no news is good news in IT.

An Accenture survey revealed that nearly half of CIOs complain that marketing does not consider IT standards when requesting new technology.

On the other hand, the marketing and sales departments are often frustrated with internal obstacles that make it difficult to implement marketing technology.  Many CMOs would like to control data and content without IT intervention.

However, Accenture also reports that despite the “feuding” between IT and marketing, both sides value the relationship. In fact, CMOs have ranked CIOs as one of the most important working relationships, second only to the head of sales.

New, easy-to-use cloud technology can ease the stress between IT and everyone else. With the swift proliferation of mobile devices in the workplace, apps are quickly becoming second nature to us all. Managing mobile security (BYOD policies and Mobile Device Management) and content has become more intuitive and standardized. The right cloud apps can bring the best of both worlds to IT, marketing, and sales.

Sales and marketing apps are effective for a number of reasons:

• Easy install – Buy – Login – Go. There is no need to call over Roger from IT to walk you through some complex integration.
• Simple management – You can manage content to a sales and marketing app by a simple backend system. Your own content. A marketer or staff admin can take care of data upload and maintenance, instead of sending a million requests to Roger.
• Take it anywhere – Chances are extremely high that staff use company content and software outside the confines of their offices. Nowadays a bulky laptop isn’t exactly the most convenient device, especially when you’re at a trade show.
• Inexpensive, really inexpensive – Cloud software and Software as a Service solutions come at a fraction of the cost of enterprise implementations.
• You still CAN involve IT– Even if your system administrators, like Roger, insist on a certain level of control for any new technology, there are mechanisms that have made this easier than ever before. Consider mobile device management programs like AirWatch and Mobile Iron that support and manage mobile devices and their content, without being overly burdensome for either side.