MatchZINE – The MarTech Magazine

MarTech management – What companies should prepare for over the next few years

No crystal ball is needed for this forecast: MarTech management will play a decisive role in the success or failure of marketing in the near future. In his second guest article, Markus Zirkel from Blickle Dir therefore presents three visions of how we can (better) manage the technologies.

Markus Zirkel MatchZINE
  • Dieser Artikel wurde am 21. March 2026 aktualisiert.
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e’re currently in a slightly paradoxical phase: the MarTech market is growing rapidly, yet in Germany the topic still hasn’t really arrived in marketing departments—MarTech management is still more of a foreign concept. While AI tools like ChatGPT are creating new realities, many marketers in this country don’t know which tools they actually need for their work. Admittedly, that’s a bit exaggerated, but one thing is clear: companies need strategic management of the many different MarTech solutions in order to continue achieving their communication goals in the future. Because marketing without MarTech simply no longer exists.

So it’s about questions like: Who will actually develop MarTech for the company over the next few years? Which departments should take the lead in MarTech management? How can you easily get an overview of the tech stack? Let’s walk through three visions of how we can (better) manage MarTech in the future.

Vision 1: Paradigm shift of the IT department from order taker to driving force

Let’s stay briefly in reality and in the present: Many IT departments today are stuck working through tickets. Will that still be the case in the future, or will there be (a necessary) paradigm shift?

To answer this question, we need to dive a little deeper into the world of no-code/low-code. Thanks to no-code tools such as Bubble, it is now possible for even people without programming knowledge to develop complete applications using a modular system. If the ready-made templates aren’t enough, you can either customize the code building blocks or even use entirely your own code. This opens up completely new possibilities for companies, because purchasing standard tools often does not fully meet the individual requirements and goals of the specialist departments.

Scott Brinker, the godfather of MarTech, recently described this trend very well. In his view, there will be many so-called “Marketing Makers” in the future. The approach is simple: If you put the power of no-code/low-code into the hands of marketers, they can implement their ideas themselves faster and more easily. MarTech development, so to speak, as self-service; marketers become “citizen developers”: Instead of waiting for a ticket from the IT department, they use the pre-built code building blocks, for example, directly for a landing page. In addition to solving problems quickly, this also drives innovation within the marketing department. Let’s be honest: How many innovations have fallen by the wayside in recent years because marketers couldn’t realize their ideas themselves due to a lack of technical know-how or capacity? 

There is another advantage associated with the rise of citizen developers. No-code/low-code platform development can help to gradually reduce the workload of the IT department. This would enable the IT department to respond more quickly to requests from customers or internal teams. 

Back to the initial question that hasn’t been answered yet. Will there be (a necessary) paradigm shift in companies? Clearly yes. To be able to generate real value and ROI from MarTech tools such as a Customer Data Platform (CDP), the specialist departments need input from IT experts—not only on request, but as ongoing, creative drivers of ideas.

Vision 2: MarTech management will foster collaboration and innovation in corporates

By now, there are a number of large companies in Germany that have built their own MarTech teams within their organization. In most companies, however, the classic separation between specialist departments can still be observed, with each department using its own tools.

One of the main triggers for the isolation of specialist departments and silo thinking was (and unfortunately still is) the hierarchical line organization. If specialist departments only have a small segment of the value chain in view, it becomes difficult to advance the tech stack as a cohesive whole.

So how can you initiate the turnaround for MarTech management in a company? When it comes to this question, the idea of bringing in external consulting often comes up. That could be an option, for example. But there is also a much more cost-effective alternative. To escape silo thinking, I recommend complementing the line organization with interdisciplinary teams. Such a team can, for instance, consist of online marketing managers, CRM managers, project managers or, as described in the previous vision, IT experts to provide forward-looking impulses. My recommendation is to place lasting trust in the experts and to provide them with a modernly designed space, whiteboards, and access to the necessary resources. Through mutual exchange about processes, great use cases can emerge. True to the motto: “Build bridges, not silos”.

Editorial reading tip on this topic:  #TalkMarTechToMe – Interview with Maximilian Steudel from Dr. Oetker

Vision 3: There is no way around MarTech modeling

Do you also feel like MarTech has really picked up speed over the past few months? Almost every day, press releases are published by major tech companies that have either launched their own AI tools or combined their tools with ChatGPT & Co. I still remember a week in March when several technologies such as GPT-4, Google Workspace AI, and Microsoft 365 Copilot were introduced within just a few days.

By now, even eight AI startups have reached unicorn status with a valuation of over one billion US dollars (Source). Altogether, the eight startups, including OpenAI, have a valuation of nearly 50 billion US dollars. New technologies like artificial intelligence will not only change the MarTech stack, but also the way marketers work with these technologies.

If your company has not yet mapped out the existing MarTech stack visually, I recommend doing this together with your teams. The main goal is to understand the current setup. Why was a particular tool introduced, and what impact does it have on your company? In my last guest article I briefly described that taking inventory of all MarTech tools is an absolute must. In practice, there is hardly anything worse than technologies that are not being used. To prevent that, you can, for example, use MarTech templates, flow charts, or architecture software.

How can a corporation find a suitable MarTech architecture that helps achieve strategic goals? And how do you deal with increasing complexity? As we know, there is no template for a target architecture. Every company architecture is unique.

Whenever things get complex, as with MarTech, we humans build models. This approach has also proven effective in other industries in the past, because models, among other things, help explain multidimensional issues in a simple way. For several years now, LEGO® Serious Play® has been a popular method in workshops to foster new ideas in companies, improve communication in project teams, and accelerate change management. A wide variety of figures and bricks are spread out across the tables so that each participant can build their own model. The important thing is that anything can take on meaning as long as it fits within the company context.

These are the advantages of the LEGO® Serious Play® method:

Matchilla - Matching-Plattform und Marktplatz Ideas are brought to life through models

Matchilla - Matching-Plattform und Marktplatz Visions become tangible and are therefore remembered better

Matchilla - Matching-Plattform und Marktplatz Co-creation fosters ideas, strategy, innovation, and culture

Matchilla - Matching-Plattform und Marktplatz Managing directors, leaders, and employees meet on equal footing

Matchilla - Matching-Plattform und Marktplatz Insights into the approaches and ways of thinking of other participants

Matchilla - Matching-Plattform und Marktplatz Thinking in three-dimensional space

Building models is extremely valuable in a MarTech context for creating clear target visions. It’s about finding out which decisions are truly important to drive progress in the technology landscape. Grab a few boxes of LEGO® and, together, develop the next level of your MarTech solution design!

What will your MarTech management of the future look like?

The three paths outlined are, of course, impulses for you and need to be brought to life in practice. And perhaps, thanks to technological progress, there will soon be methods and solutions that we haven’t even thought of yet.

What do you think of the three visions? Which approach are you choosing for your MarTech management – or are you still far from it? Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn so we can exchange ideas. I look forward to your connection request!

You can find me on LinkedIn here
Picture of Markus Zirkel
Markus Zirkel

Markus Zirkel is Project Manager Digital Customer Insights at Blickle Räder+Rollen GmbH & Co. KG. He is looking for cultural and technical ways to connect the worlds of IT, marketing, and sales. By centralizing customer data and breaking down data silos, he improves decision-making processes in the individual business units. With a focus on B2B, his experience lies particularly in lead management, MarTech, data culture, and digital transformation. Through the master’s degree program Data Engineering and Consulting (M.Sc.), he is specializing in order to speak both the commercial and the technical language.

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