Consider this additional finding: approximately 22 percent of the respondents across the Accenture survey said that the marketing organization controlled at least three-quarters of the budget for digital marketing; that compares with 32 percent who indicated that the IT wields more control.

This money is nothing to sneeze at: among the survey respondents, 25 percent expect to spend $26 million to $100 million on digital marketing initiatives; 27 percent anticipated up to $500 million; and 12 percent were ready to invest more than that.

Where Solution Providers Can Add Value

The primary reasons that marketing teams are seeking to work more closely with digital technology experts come down to the complexity of the applications, and the need to integrate these services far more closely with existing systems that can inform them, including CRM deployments, data warehouses, customer contact centers and even social media tools.

Accenture notes in its analysis:

"Digital requires end-to-end journey management. It is no longer about the marketing or IT functions in isolation. It's about integrating technology, data and marketing services, running the platform in the cloud, responding quickly to new customer requirements and adding new services as required. 'Test, learn and earn' is the new mantra, and marketing needs to have more flexibility in managing the marketing IT budget."

A separate report by IT service provider Avanade (originally founded by Microsoft and Accenture), offers these recommendations for creating a unified IT-marketing approach:

• Develop experts that combine knowledge of marketing processes with an understanding of the need for IT rigor
• Put data front and center, especially analytics capabilities
• Help businesses accommodate and handle "shadow IT" systems that address real problems, essentially supporting innovation while managing security and compliance needs 
• Identify common goals and use them to build empathy across organizational siloes that traditionally have operated separately

Two years ago, market research firm Gartner predicted CMOs would spend more on technology by 2017 by their CIO counterparts. Whether or not you believe that, marketing technology has become both a disruptor and differentiator. Is your firm poised to benefit?