I've seen major fallacies with business information during my career software consulting, which the business operators, even their "IT", is oblivious to. It's common that a business decides to host non-public information on the same server that hosts their website. It's fast, cost effective, and easy for their IT to get going and maintain; it's an easy decision. It's the wrong decision. Not only are there security issues involved (which is a huge issue I won't be discussing here), but what becomes most detrimental is that marketing content is deployed at mercy of IT business operations.

Separate marketing content from business information.

I've seen marketing teams frustrated to hell and back by not being able to move quickly with new marketing content. I've seen mountains of weight and stress be uplifted marketers when they move onto a system that is separated from IT, where they do not need to stress about security, or botching up business information. Why is this? This quote sums is up:

For most consumer-goods companies, introducing new products faster, at lower cost, and with greater likelihood of market success is the constant but elusive goal. (Source)



Marketers know the importance of launching campaigns quickly, additionally they need to test and fail fast to learn. They cannot do this if their hands are tied by IT with expensive implementations (both time and resources), security protocols, and legacy business operations. When marketers can move fast, the business will benefit. Release marketers from the grasps of IT.

This is not IT's fault

It's important to recognize that IT is not creating this issue, they are merely stuck in the middle. Here is the scenario: when marketers need content deployed, they have to write an email to IT. IT receives this email under a pile of "IT" emails, and it becomes a priority on the "to-do" list. Marketing is frustrated because they needed to launch this campaign yesterday, but a salesperson mail isn't working on their phone and the logistics team is having trouble with the database. Marketing becomes frustrated and starts sending emails until their content is deployed. Now IT feels like marketing is nagging them... because they are... because they need to be. This process repeats itself, and both Marketing and IT build a silent hatred towards each other. There is a solution.

Use SaaS products for marketing. No IT necessary.

IT people have more important things to do than make sure marketing content is secure and deployed quickly, so relieve them of the task. If IT is fighting to keep marketing content hosting in-house, they should be up for evaluation. There are many great SaaS products out there to handle the many jobs IT once groaned over.

Hubspot: a true SaaS product for landing pages with marketing automation.

a true SaaS product for landing pages with marketing automation.

Mailchimp: a true SaaS Emailing product for running email marketing campaigns. a true SaaS Emailing product for running email marketing campaigns.

Zesty.io: a true SaaS CMS product for launching websites.

These three products solve different problems, from email campaigns to full operational brand websites. Each require a level of initial setup by an IT person, but then grant full control to marketers to go wild with. Also, admin capabilities for IT exist to manage users, permissions, and any technical stuff under the hood, so IT can still do what they do best.

Mature SaaS products didn't truly exist 5 years ago, so business is on track to makes moves into SaaS now. It's also important to note that "Cloud" systems are very different from 100%!S(MISSING)aaS, as they come with unseen IT management. Look for true SaaS products that do not require management and are 100%!w(MISSING)eb-based. In doing so the business will benefit from IT and marketing getting along again, and positive jumps in performance and production on both ends.

