How Aldo Approaches Martech Investments

These days, CMOs are expected to be not only marketing gurus, but also technology enthusiasts. In an August 2018 survey from Forrester Consulting and Accenture Interactive, 26% of marketers worldwide said that, when it comes to innovation over the next 12 months, one of the key elements of the CMO role will be driving a new technology strategy.

But having a technology strategy in place is not enough. It needs to be integrated with the rest of the enterprise’s ecosystem. To do this, marketers must collaborate with the IT team. For our upcoming report "Canada Martech 2019," we spoke with Grégoire Baret, general manager of omnichannel experience at shoe retailer Aldo, about what that looks like.

eMarketer: What’s your first step in rolling out a new technology?

Baret: Everything starts with a co-creative session to hear everyone’s advice and define what the key elements we want to follow are. The meeting could include people from IT to sales to development. The goal is to get an extensive overview of things we need to consider—whether it’s related to business or technology.

eMarketer: What is IT's role during these meetings?

Baret: They’re mostly focused on the security of the core enterprise and data management—and making sure that, no matter what we’re doing, it’s compliant and respectful of the rules. They also ensure the overall architecture is simple enough that we can maintain and evolve it, and that it's secure enough that there’s no risk of a data breach. Payment management and fulfillment systems are also left to them.

eMarketer: Where does marketing come in?

Baret: My team is driving the ongoing development and technology approach, and we deal with anything related to the front-end experience, including the front-end layers of the web services and marketing penetration index [MPI]. We’re always tracking with IT and making sure that our direction is fitting well within the enterprise structure.

eMarketer: You mentioned the need to respect the rules. Does that mean you’re factoring privacy and GDPR into the process?

Baret: We look at the local need for compliance and the overall benefit to the customer’s experience. It’s an interesting collaboration, because it has to align with IT in the data management and security aspect, but it also has to give consumers an easy way to access or modify their data.

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