Some of this can be from lack of communication, lack of trust, and lack of understanding – but developing a good working relationship between these seemingly disparate departments can only have positive effects on the business.

To discover how to make the most of the collaboration between finance and marketing, it is important to understand the benefits of each department, and what they offer to the business.

What Does the Finance Department Do?

The finance department of a business might be one person in a small business, or a hug department across different countries in a multinational conglomerate – but in either case, they are responsible for making financial decisions for the company.

This includes:
• Creating financial statements and reports
• Reconciling income and expenditure with daily accounting
• Preparing and forecasting budgets
• Paying employees
• Collecting customer payments and paying suppliers.

What Does the Marketing Department Do?

In the marketing department, creative types come together to help a business grow and expand. Their aim is to promote the brand, product, and services that are available from the company, with the aim of making more money for the business.

As part of this, the marketing department might get involved in:
• Researching customer trends and what competitors are doing
• Designing and refining the company brand
• Developing strategies for email marketing, social media, and through other channels.
• Creating and curating advertising campaigns

How to Build Collaboration?

Much of the issue between finance and marketing is that they are not always on the same page – for the marketing department, finance people are boring and only care about the bottom line, while the finance department might consider the marketing team to be creative types that don’t care about the numbers.
What can your business do to improve this working relationship? Firstly, there needs to be a real understanding between both departments about what they do and how they do it. Silo mentality, where departments do not work closely or even really communicate, is problematic and can be detrimental for the working culture as well as the bottom line of the business.

Communication

The key to true understanding is communication. This might look different depending on the business, but in most cases regular in-person meetings are the best way to make this happen.

These meetings will be a cornerstone of communication because they will allow visibility between marketing and finance. The marketing team will be able to see what sort of budgetary forecasts the finance team are making, while the finance team will be able to see the planning that goes into a marketing campaign.

Both departments will have a chance to show what they need from each other to develop that working relationship to a point where both teams are working in sync to make the company profitable, increasing revenue and maintain cash flow.

Hold each other accountable

If the marketing department is looking for some more budget for a new campaign or project, they need to show the finance team that there is a real, costed plan for the way the money will be spent.
The finance department need to be able to show the marketing team what they need to know to be able to release more budget.

This shared responsibility of holding each other accountable is essential for a good working relationship to be developed.

Share Success

It’s not all doom and gloom when it comes to these regular meetings and communications – it shouldn’t always be about marketing asking for money and finance withholding it.
Instead, take time to share success stories and demonstrate the ROI that has been achieved from the teams working together.

If the marketing team can demonstrate that they are directly adding to the pot more than they are taking, then the finance team are going to be happy to share more of the budget pot.

Benefits of a Great Working Relationship Between Finance and Marketing

When departments are shown that the way forward is collaboration, there are so many benefits.

Firstly, for the marketing team – a good relationship means more trust with budgets. This means that the marketers wont necessarily need to ask for every single cent that they need, and they can have autonomy to decide whether the next campaign is going to be a national TV advert or billboards featuring poker games at a large scale tournament, highlighting key features about their apps and company values which many consumers treasure.

For the finance team, having agreed KPIs and results that are being checked and shared helps them develop a certainty of expenditure that helps them plan changes and be more comfortable with letting go of their budgets (and less likely to cut the marketing fund).