BIA/Kelsey Bytes are excerpts from research reports. This is the latest installment from the recently launched report, Call Commerce: A $1 Trillion Economic Engine. It picks up where last week’s post left off.

The report can be downloaded for free here.

The Evolving CMO

An important question arises here: Who is the call analytics platform buyer? That buyer and his or her role are broadening to include several job functions due to lowered barriers for non-tech people to implement call commerce.

In the SMB world, the answer is a bit less complex because the buyer and decision maker for adopting call analytics is generally the proprietor or marketing manager. The latter could be a dedicated person, a hybrid role or the owner’s tech-savvy nephew.

For larger enterprises, it is a much more nuanced discussion that involves macro trends in organizational behavior and enterprise software dynamics. Traditionally, the IT department has presided over platform adoption, which has raised adoption barriers and red tape.

But in the SaaS era, enterprise platforms can be hosted and managed in the cloud, democratizing the use of powerful platforms throughout the enterprise. As a result, we see marketing departments and CMOs gain control of what used to be the CTO’s jurisdiction.

Gartner famously predicts the CMO will have a larger tech budget than the CTO by 2017. And this applies directly to call analytics adoption and implementation. Freedom from IT makes the buying cycle less mired in technical red tape, which is good news for everyone involved.

Call analytics platforms are also increasingly tied into CRM systems like Salesforce. This makes their purchase and implementation even easier as they can be plugged into an already-installed enterprise platform. There are lots of natural synergies between call analytics and CRM as well.

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