Navigating the cookieless future with cross-functional teams

The shift away from third-party cookies represents a significant change in how advertisers and businesses collect and use data. The change isn’t just a technical issue but will require unprecedented cross-functional collaboration. 

Marketing, IT, legal, compliance, customer service teams and other parts of the business must work together to navigate the complexities of collecting and managing data flow. Marketing teams must move out of their silos and integrate seamlessly with other parts of the organization to ensure — and potentially increase — the success of their digital marketing campaigns. 

In this article, we’ll explore the imperative for cross-functional collaboration in navigating this future, plus some strategies for creating cross-functionality in a cookieless future.

The cross-functional imperative

Organizations can’t afford the costs of misalignment in either strategy or execution when it comes to both protecting privacy and optimizing their customer interactions. A blend of expertise from different teams is needed to overcome the challenges posed by these new privacy shifts and departments no longer have the luxury of staying siloed. 

Hand-offs between departments create costly delays and misalignment creates confusion that stalls out initiatives. Real-time collaboration and decision-making are needed on an ongoing basis to address this changing landscape. 

Building teams that span the organization

Organizations that build durable and dedicated cross-functional teams will appear ahead in the cookieless future. Those organizations will be rewarded with fewer delays, increased alignment and more innovation. This contrasts with organizations that treat the cookie crackdown as a side project, pulling people from various functions in an ad hoc manner. Those organizations are at the mercy of calendar congestion, delays from other initiatives and a lack of shared purpose. 

Dedicated teams can focus on developing and implementing strategies for the upcoming privacy shifts, whether that be evolving first-party data strategies, implementing cookie alternatives like Unified ID, or responding to shifts in privacy laws. These teams cross over various functions, including marketing, IT, data analytics, customer service, legal, compliance and product development.

Cross-functional collaborations to consider

The shift to a cookieless future requires various viewpoints and inputs to navigate the change successfully. The number of teams your organization requires depends on the size and complexity of your business. Below are a few potential initiatives and cross-functional collaborations to consider: 

• First-party data collection and management. Marketing, IT, customer service, legal and product to ensure data collection methods are innovative and fully compliant.
• Data security and storage. Legal and IT for compliant data storage free from hacking hazards.
• Customer insights. Data analytics, customer service and marketing to glean new ways to target customers.
• Privacy laws and regulations. Legal, compliance and marketing to adhere to local, national and international laws.
• Features and user experience. Product, legal, marketing and IT to improve personalization and the customer experience, especially for digitally-based products.

Dig deeper: How to foster effective collaboration between marketing and IT

Finding the people, forming the teams

In smaller organizations, the people involved in developing and implementing a cookieless strategy can be clear enough. However, surfacing the people responsible for privacy laws or managing first-party data in large enterprises may be more difficult.

One approach to forming effective teams is to organize around value. The list above identifies some areas of value to the customer — secure and compliant data with an easy-to-use, personalized product marketed to them at just the right time and place. 

Forming teams around value streams allows organizations to accomplish two goals. The first is to break free from the hierarchy and consider the people needed to deliver the value to the customer, regardless of their reporting relationship. The second is to focus on customer needs and the value being delivered to the customer. 

To create teams based on value streams, look at the value being delivered — for example, optimizing features and user experience around first-party data collection. Then, map the steps to create these features and determine who is part of that process. Determine the level of involvement of each person in the process and place the ‘most involved’ people together on that team. 

Creating teams in this way helps reduce hand-offs and delays between functional areas while bringing together all the knowledge needed to deliver a complete initiative. 

A path to follow

Organizing around value has its roots in Lean and Agile methodologies. Agile marketing has emerged as a way for marketers to become more responsive, streamline communications and manage evolving landscapes like the cookieless future.

In an agile marketing environment, dedicated, cross-functional teams work together to identify the highest value work, quickly surface risks and dependencies and resolve impediments to keep work flowing. The result is better-aligned teams with clear goals, communication channels and escalation paths. 

Born out of agile software development, the agile approach was made for highly complex, challenging environments filled with unknowns. Agile marketing embraces many tools and practices to ensure clear, consistent communication across teams, functions and departments while fostering a culture of innovation and continuous improvement. 

Applying agile’s approach to cross-functional teams is ready-made to help those navigating a cookie-less future maintain agility in processes to quickly adapt to new regulations and new technologies. 

Dig deeper: Why collaboration and teamwork are essential in agile marketing

Cross-functionality in a cookieless future 

In the VUCA world swirling around cookies, data and privacy, organizations no longer have the luxury of staying in their functional silos. The challenges of coordinating multi-functional strategies and solutions in fast-changing environments demand faster information sharing, alignment and innovation. 

Organizations that recognize and embrace this reality are positioned to take the lead, delivering an improved customer experience, a reputation for privacy consideration and better marketing outcomes. Agile practices, whether in software development, marketing or any other function, provide a framework to follow. These practices help teams stay aligned and continuously deliver innovative solutions. 

By understanding the importance of cross-functional collaboration and implementing strategies to foster it, businesses can effectively navigate the challenges of a cookieless future. This approach will address immediate technical and regulatory challenges and lay the foundation for more integrated, innovative and customer-centric business practices.

Dig deeper: Google’s cookie deprecation: An essential marketing playbook for the post-cookie era