Hasta La Creative!

Our view is that more and more technology is a business enabler. We’re a tech company so technology is our business but more importantly the business is technology. And as more companies are centered on the customer, then IT should also be supercharging the customer engagements of the company. If that’s the case and if IT is going to report into an area, it’ll report into sales or marketing as those are the two areas that are customer facing. Marketing is one area that’s very comfortable with technology. Marketing teams have been working in digital fields for the last decade, overseeing websites, content management, social platforms, databases, the collaboration tools we use internally, and we’re familiar with analytics. The CMO has been knee deep in technology strategy. It’s a natural fit.

Ad Age: What other parts of the company does IT impact under you?

Mr. Conrado: IT also drives culture within the company. Part of it has to do with collaboration. Our internal tools that we call systems of collaboration drive everything from traditional tools such as email to, increasingly, social platforms used as collaboration tools that are tied into employee profiles. And as companies increasingly have a disparate workforce, how do you find experts and do knowledge sharing? There’s a lot of inherent knowledge sitting within systems, how do we bubble that up to better use it. Today I just came from our downtown facility and a meeting that was myself and the IT VP and head of HR for company. We spent three hours talking about systems of collaboration and what those look like over next two years — how do we cross borders, bridge internal and external people. It’s about the culture of the company and the systems that enable that.

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