IT executives at a large Johannesburg-based service provider used to joke until recently that they would go to their own company’s product launches to find out what they needed to implement, such was the lack of communication between IT and marketing. Today, such silent treatment is a prelude to failure, given the interconnectedness of IT and marketing. Jamie Whittaker, head of channels at Discovery Health Systems, says he deals with marketing on every project he runs in the channel space, particularly the consumer-facing ones.

“At Discovery, we think of ourselves on the technical side as business partners rather than business fulfillment, so we like to drive the projects as much as marketing does. I meet with the head of marketing and the R&D team on a weekly basis. The chief digital officer role is also becoming more popular. We’ve just appointed a new CDO and his job is to make sure that marketing, R&D, product and technical teams are working in conjunction.”