The CMO Council's White Paper on "Best Practices in Big Data and Engagement" highlights the challenges of data silos and the need for a new partnership between marketing and IT resources to optimize customer engagement platforms. The paper identifies data as a key point of synergy between the two functions, and both marketing and IT see big data as both an opportunity and an obstacle. The paper emphasizes the importance of turning big data into actionable intelligence and insights to achieve a customer-centric enterprise.