The interplay between e-commerce and Digital Marketing came up in a conversation with Rob Swint, Director of Marketing @ Endeca, which by the way has a superb enterprise search product.
For example: there is a purchase decision to be made for an Enterprise Search product. By the way here is Gartner’s take on the picture if you are interested in learning more about Enterprise Search and more – http://mediaproducts.gartner.com/reprints/endeca/169927.html
Foreground:
There is tremendous dependence on the eCommerce folks for technology which directly impacts Digital Marketing. More often than not, the purchase decision does not rest with Digital Marketing; digital marketing is the primary beneficiary.
Solution:
For an effective solution that has true enterprise benefits, the Digital group may have to conduct its own research when seeking technology solutions which directly impact it. Perhaps, eCommerce may be more concerned with the ease of integration, ease of implementation and how the technology fits into the existing framework, integration with Sharepoint, etc. Conversely Digital marketing may consider how the technology results increase traffic, integrate with behavioral marketing analytics, other existing analytics packages, CRM tools, and reporting tools.
To optimize the purchase decision the ideal process solution would be if the research were done by the two individual business units (ecommerce and digital) separately and then converge upon a solution.
Digital Marketing is the resulting beneficiary of the action and its individual take and involvement in assessing the most viable option is paramount.