CTOs must flip the martech conversation and start with a dynamic data foundation
Reimagine how data empowers the future martech stack
Marketing technology is a continuous conundrum for the CTO. They’re under pressure to rationalise martech stacks to cut costs, but at the same time they’re constantly being asked to evaluate or invest in the latest tool to power innovation, drive transformation, and grow the business.
For the last 15 years, CTOs have poured investment into a long line of martech platforms and solutions – each one promising to fulfil a specific business need. And the expansion of martech shows no sign of slowing, with the current LUMAscape containing over 15,000 solutions, Forrester predicting worldwide martech spend will surpass $215 billion by 2027, and an explosion of AI tools flooding the market.
But despite – or perhaps because of – the vast range of technologies available, most businesses struggle with excessive technical debt and a complex and unwieldy martech stack that doesn’t drive sufficient growth. In an AI-powered world, where boards expect connected technologies to drive commercial success, CTOs are working with fragmented systems that simply can’t deliver. In fact, two-thirds (66%) of businesses report overlapping functionality in different martech tools that leads to unnecessary complexity, according to our recent research into martech modernisation.
Essentially, CTOs have invested in data and martech ecosystems that are failing to meet their key objectives and KPIs.
It’s time for CTOs to take a new, simpler approach – one that turns the martech conversation on its head by starting not with the endless solutions, tools, and platforms that make up the experience layer of the martech stack, but with the data that feeds them. Rather than keep building tech on top of tech, or contemplating an entire rip and replace, they can future-proof their existing stack, increase agility, and improve budget management through solid, connected data foundations.
This isn’t just transformation – it’s a full-scale rethink of how data powers the future.
Stop buying tech. Just connect what you’ve got.
Changes to the martech stack are ongoing, with 99% of businesses planning to make changes in the next 12 months. Over a third (35%) will replace existing tools, while 29% will add more. But the reality is, most IT departments already have all the technology they need to keep the marketing team happy. There’s little need to invest in more.
The problem is that IT teams have built and bought solutions around channel development. The result is greater segregation and complexity.
There are platforms to serve paid media and manage programmatic, display, social, and video. There are solutions to deal with owned media, including email, web, app, and e-commerce. And there are tools to assist with physical media such as point-of-sale or in-store advertising. Each of these technologies – and its associated data – is deployed and managed in siloes, limiting their value from the outset.
The solution is to use these platforms more strategically, making them interconnected. Connectivity should be simplified not at the channel or experience layer – where campaigns are launched and managed – but through the customer, in the underlying data layer. This requires reimagining how we design a data estate that unifies all data points, enabling a holistic understanding of the customer, something that today remains highly fragmented.
When information silos are broken down to create a holistic data foundation, all experience platforms will benefit from the insights generated. By fully integrating these tools, with a real-time information flow, they can work from a 360-degree view of the consumer, which supports the seamless, connected interactions that will power growth.
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of organisations say integration with existing systems isn’t always considered when making martech purchases.
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of organisations say different teams are responsible for different solutions or aspects of martech.
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of organisations say fragmented and siloed data hinders their ability to deliver personalised experiences.
So to drive real commercial impact, you need to rearchitect your entire ecosystem, building it around data and therefore – by definition – around the customer. Because in a world moving at speed, disconnected data and channel silos aren’t just inefficient – they’re a fast track to irrelevance.
South Western Railway takes a passenger-first approach
South Western Railway (SWR) had a siloed infrastructure, making it difficult to understand customers and deliver consistent messaging across channels.
Acxiom worked with SWR to evaluate their needs, develop a strategy, and implement a transformational roadmap, connecting data to enable omnichannel experiences.
The result? SWR now takes a passenger-first approach that leads with data and activates via a fully integrated marketing intelligence solution.
It’s not just tech and data siloes that need breaking down. You also need to reimagine agency partnerships and internal team structures to support an intelligent, integrated ecosystem. Agencies, for example, can no longer focus solely on crafting great experiences – they must also become expert data architects, capable of building the foundations that power those experiences. And brands must bring in the right talent to build and support the connected solutions of the future.
Rapid value creation through a unique customer fabric
Building a martech ecosystem around data – and therefore the customer – requires a smart, dynamic data foundation.
It’s easy for CTOs to assume a data solution, such as a customer data platform (CDP), is implemented in the same way as any other piece of marketing technology. Or that a data foundation is just some sort of storage tool, like a data lake or warehouse.
But what CTOs actually need is a connected, holistic data foundation that can power experience platforms, and is agile enough to deliver the use cases of today while fuelling innovation for tomorrow. Organisations need to decouple their data solution from other technology integrations and create a unique customer fabric. This incorporates multiple elements including:
- Connected enterprise data
- Identity resolution to stitch data together
- Ability to process and activate real time customer signals
- Artificial intelligence to predict customer needs
- Analytics to model audiences
- Collaborative data sharing with partners
Businesses need to reimagine what a truly 360-degree data estate looks like – not just collecting data, but actively enhancing, connecting, and collaborating across siloes to remain competitive.
This smart, dynamic data foundation feeds up into all the experience platforms organisations already have – from adtech solutions to ecommerce platforms. It allows businesses to grow and scale not through the addition of tech solutions but through smart use of data.
The data solution of the future is focused on rapid value creation for the enterprise by creating a strategic customer data asset. The key differentiator is that this customer asset is no longer the enabler of primarily marketing use cases but it can be used to power enterprise-wide use cases for analytics, scheduling, finance, client operations and AI that can drive top line and bottom line benefits for the organisation.
Heathrow Airport adopts one-to-one communications
Heathrow Airport had a CRM, but it wasn’t delivering the expected return. Data was fragmented, and personalisation was limited.
Acxiom helped Heathrow modernise their stack and build a CRM strategy that included segmentation, campaign execution, analytics, and business intelligence.
The result? One-to-one, personalised communications that improved the passenger experience and unlocked new revenue streams. That work even earned us a Salesforce Partner Innovation Award.
AI will only ever be as good as the data that feeds it
The rapid emergence of AI is shaking up the way CTOs view marketing technology:
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of businesses say the emergence of AI has already prompted them to review their existing tech stack.
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of businesses feel the evolution of AI will require an overhaul of their existing martech solutions.
Right now AI is largely viewed as a new capability – a novel tactic to try on specific use cases or campaigns and test the impact. But ultimately AI will need to be integrated into every part of the martech stack, including the data foundation. To automate marketing and deliver the transformative results it promises, it must become a thread that runs through everything an organisation does.
A weak data estate will quietly sabotage even the boldest AI ambitions, because fundamentally AI is only as good as the data used to train and power it. AI doesn’t create clarity, it amplifies what it’s given, so if your data is fragmented, outdated, or inaccessible, the insights will be too.
‘Garbage in, garbage out’ has never been more valid. If you feed AI poor-quality data, the results will be just as poor. Incomplete or incorrect data will increase occurrences of AI hallucinations which will have to be addressed with extensive training and guardrails. And outdated data will generate less valuable or accurate recommendations or decisions.
So, no CTO can claim to deliver meaningful AI outcomes without first redesigning their data architecture. To leverage the full power of AI, data from the entire enterprise needs to be connected and made available to AI solutions. In addition to customer data from every channel, this also includes organisational data – things like product catalogues and availability, training manuals, and call recordings or chat logs.
To unlock AI’s true potential, CTOs need to reimagine what a future-ready data foundation looks like. Clean, connected, governed, and built for scale and agility. Only then can AI move from promise to performance, and power the intelligent, adaptive experiences that will drive growth.
From resource to revenue:
It’s time to put your data to work
Rethinking martech for the future demands more than a tweak. It calls for a new kind of architecture – one that flips the traditional model and moves from experience-first, top-down systems to a bottom-up, data-led ecosystem. In this new model, data isn’t just a resource, it’s the foundation of a truly connected experience engine.
Acxiom can be by your side throughout this process, helping you put your data to work to solve your most difficult challenges, so you can cut costs and pay-down technical debt while staying ahead of tech advancement and growing the business.
Get in touch to find out more about how Acxiom can help you prepare for a data-powered future today.
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