Find Your Digital Direction. Master the Technology Landscape.

In recent years, the marketing technology landscape has rapidly grown in complexity. To manage and plan technology and marketing effectively, digital professionals must understand the  connections between business operational areas, applications, technologies and vendors.

Gartner’s Digital Marketing Transit Map shows the relationships among business functions, application services and solution providers.

Specifically, the different elements of the map can help identify connections between business functions and guide collaboration between marketing and IT.

• Neighborhoods represent functional regions that can be thought of as practice areas within an organization.
• Tracks connect these regions, and can be thought of as application services that share common objectives and information.
• Stations represent interaction points that can be thought of as vendor and product categories that provide platforms and point solutions.
• Intersections represent transfer points where solutions may serve more than one business area.

Scott Brinker also shared some excellent thoughts on the implications of this expansive marketing technology landscape on Chief Marketing Technologist today.

Looking at this map can help you consider how your marketing and technology goals are converging and lining up in your company. Are they on a stable, reliable track — with information easily flowing from one station to the next? Or are some of the stations closed for maintenance?