Just 22% of CMOs say their partnership with CFOs is truly collaborative according to new research from the CMO Council and KPMG. Just over a quarter (26%) of the marketing leaders surveyed describe the relationship they have with finance as “indifferent”, while 7% say it is outright “hesitant”.

The report, titled ‘Marketing & finance: Fuelling innovation or falling behind?’, takes a look at the impediments to collaboration between marketing and finance, but also highlights the benefits of effective collaboration.

While no silver bullet, the report suggests that joint ownership of customer data is paramount, but that only 18% of marketing leaders strongly believe both finance and marketing have the same access to the customer data and transactional information that informs marketing decision-making.

The report makes clear that an unwilling or hesitant approach to collaboration between the two departments has a chilling effect on the ability of a brand to respond in an agile way to disruption.

As a result the report advocates for marketing team leaders to approach their finance counterparts with “technology investments that add value to both your marketing and finance sectors” in order to show how investment in marketing provides a halo effect for the wider business.

It echoes advice given by Boots’ former CFO Michael Snape and current CMO Pete Markey on effective collaboration, in which Snape advocated for marketers to make a consistent effort to explain the wider benefits of marketing efforts to the finance team, rather than just treating them “as a bank”.

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