It’s commonly said that IT and Marketing speak different languages. In our experience, they often want the same thing: growth, reliability, and measurable ROI. The tension we see in meetings isn't actually a clash of personalities, but rather, a clash of systems, and often from these threebottlenecks:

1. Unmanaged “Messes”

Marketing lives on data, and data requires tracking. But when pixels, chat tools, and testing frameworks are added haphazardly, technical debt and unknow risks pile up.

• The Conflict: IT sees a bloated, unstable site with security vulnerabilities, when Marketing sees a suite of essential tools.
• Real Life Examples: Earlier today we had a meeting with a company that was running 1 Wordpress website, a landing page builder account (when it could have been done on Wordpress too), 2 different form providers (1 wordpress plug-in and a SaaS form builder), a newsletter, and a pop-up catalogue account.) The integrations broke mid-campaign, and they scrambled. (They are now in the process of consolidating!)
• The Fix: Centralized governance. By moving to a structured deployment model (like a robust Tag Management System such as Google Tag Manager for scripts) and conducting regular audits, you ensure that "more tools" doesn't equal "less governance."

2. The Ownership Gray Zone

Who "owns" the website? If the answer is "it’s complicated," you have a bottleneck. When Marketing drives content but IT manages the host while an outside vendor handles the code, even the simplest updates can stall.

• The Conflict: Simple changes become political battles, and performance dips trigger a "blame game" rather than a solution.
• Real Life Examples: An agency developed a site for a client that the client’s IT department insisted on hosting themselves. When the client asks the IT Department to make simple template changes, it often results in questions that need the agency to be looped in anyway - when they eventually get to the ticket. But when the agency helps out, they need the IT department to reopen a VPN login before they can even take a look.
• The Fix: Explicit ownership models, and document your deployment standards and pre-define escalation paths so that everyone knows who holds the keys before an incident occurs – while ensuring the right experts have the access they need.

3. The "Last-Minute" Security Wall

Too often, IT is brought into the software procurement process only after Marketing has already fallen in love with a tool. This turns IT into the "Department of No."

• The Conflict: Marketing feels delayed; IT feels forced to bypass risk protocols to meet a launch date.
• Real Life Examples: Two months into a rebuild, IT introduced a SOC 2 requirement that had never been formally documented, stalling the launch. Marketing saw obstruction while IT saw overdue risk management. The real issue, of course, was undefined standards.
• The Fix: Shift-left security. Embed IT’s security standards and evaluation criteria at the start of the vendor selection process. Early collaboration actually increases velocity by eliminating late-stage rework.

When these three structural gaps exist, reporting fractures naturally. Marketing, IT, and Sales end up measuring different outcomes, and executives are left reconciling conflicting dashboards.

The Bottom Line: Alignment is Structural, Not Cultural

Most friction stems from fragmented systems and inconsistent governance. Digital growth in 2026 is systemic; it requires infrastructure discipline and marketing agility to operate within the same framework.

To remove the bottlenecks, we should stop trying to change the people and start designing better systems instead.

This is also where a structured capacity model like Smartt's FlexHours becomes more than a budgeting tool. When IT and Marketing draw from the same governed execution pool, the friction caused by handoffs, emergency requests, and siloed retainers begins to dissolve. Instead of Marketing sourcing separate vendors for campaigns and IT absorbing the cleanup later, FlexHours creates shared accountability for infrastructure integrity and performance outcomes. It turns alignment from a negotiation into an operating model, where growth initiatives and system stability are funded, prioritized, and executed within the same disciplined framework.