Watch that Org Chart in 2010

Twenty percent of tech vendors $1b or greater in revenue are now reporting that they have experienced some form of organizational "mash-up" between marketing and sales over the last 12 months. This is the C-level effort to adddress the long-standing mis-alignments and costly points-of-friction between sales and marketing.

Lots of thoughts on this...but the most important is a "heads-up" to expect more organizational pressure and change in 2010. IDC forecasts marketing expenses (investment) to rise by 3.5% this year. We expect sales expenses (investment) to rise by 4.7%. Finally, we expect average revenue to to rise by 3.2 %. So, the math is not hard: operating margins will be under continued pressure. My sense is that the C-Level will respond with more brute force re-drawing of organization charts.