Recently, a Forrester report came out discussing the need for marketing and IT departments to work together in order to lessen the amount of time it takes to collect customer data and to increase the value a company can gain from it. While traditionally each department may have existed in a silo, it's now more important than ever that they are able to not only work together, but speak the same language of increased sales for the company as a whole. CIO Magazine talks about some of the ways cooperation between the departments can be reached in order to achieve the company's overall goals.

However, the importance of this transition cannot be understated, nor can the opportunities either. The reason for these departments working more closely has to do both with an increasing need for marketing to be data-driven and for customer input to be quickly incorporated into product development. Companies that are able to do so will benefit from a clear competitive advantage over their competitors.

Marketing is now more scientific than ever. Through A/B testing and goal tracking, customer interactions can be more closely tracked and messaging more refined than ever before. The key to success in this new model relies on processing all of this information quickly, and making sense of it while it's still relevant.

The same is true for product development. With the layers between yourself and your customers effectively gone, many companies are beginning to look into ways to integrate customer feedback into the product development process. Ideas such as The Lean Startup espouse as much.

However, all of this is moot without people who clearly understand both sides of this new technical marketing proposition. The future for both departments lies in understanding and respecting each other, and developing processes that utilize the strengths of each. This is also one of the advantages you're likely to see in digital agencies going forward. As an organization that's usually a healthy mix of marketers and developers, they have a distinct advantage in seeing both sides of this proposition, and adjusting quickly towards it.

Whether you're working with huge marketing and IT departments or you're looking to hand that part of your business off to an agency, it's important that they understand what your company stands to gain from their cooperation, or lose from a lack of it. Without properly instituted practices, they're unlikely to be able to capitalize on new, data-driven marketing techniques. Nor will IT departments and developers be able to adjust quickly to the requirements of the customer if they're unable to properly incorporate feedback into their work.

The future belongs to businesses that understand that being technical and a marketer is no longer an oxy-moron. How long will it be before your organization makes that adjustment?