Making business investments takes courage, especially in these challenging economic times. Technology investments are a component of almost all business investments these days. I hate our batting average on the return on investment (ROI) for web-to-print software investments. I can’t say I’ve done formal market research – I don’t trust what people say during surveys anyway, but virtually every customer we engage with has a “story” about a failed web-to-print software investment.

My baseball fan friends always say to me, “if you hit three out of ten, you’re on the road to the hall of fame.” We can’t afford a batting average of 300 in our web-to-print software investments. We built the W2P Finder to impact the batting average in the field of print software investments. There is a lot of confusion around technology in general, mostly because the technology industry has devolved down to the lowest common denominator of product features. More and more features, long lists, great effort to compare and contrast, all in the service of what? Features confuse. Features force the buyer to learn the language of the vendor (homework). The feature discussion gets in the way of what’s really important – your online strategy and how that can be enabled by the right technology provider!

I’ve seen printers focus down at the feature level and then select a product that doesn’t actually support their primary target customer market. Worst of all, they proceed with the implementation and try and force a solution to do what it was never intended to do. Everyone loses. The vendor has a very unhappy customer; the printer wasted their precious business investment dollars, lost time to market, and now is faced with the hard choice of starting over.

In many situations, printers confuse technology with their strategy. Technology isn’t your strategy; it’s the tool that enables your strategy. You have to have a strategy, buying technology will not make your business successful online; the only thing it guarantees is money leaving your bank account and getting deposited in the vendors (that always happens).

The W2P Finder doesn’t select a vendor for you; it simple asks that you think through the highest level components of your strategy in the process of your selection.

Don’t be freaked out by the word strategy – this isn’t consultant speak; this is simply the essence of what you’re trying to accomplish in language that everyone in your organization understands. Don’t spend your precious business investment dollars without defining who you’re trying to target online, what you want to sell them, and where you want to do business (geography). Doesn’t that sound ridiculously obvious? It can’t be that simply. Technology is supposed to be in a language only the tech geeks understand, and include lots of conversations about servers, xml, and databases – this is something anyone can understand. Precisely my point; figure your strategy out first, and then let it be your guide for choosing the enabling technology tool.

How to Innovate: Imaging and Printing Interactive. Web-to-Print

The internet is essential tool in any company’s communication and management processes, from enhanced reality apps to QR codes, on-demand printing and the Web-to-Print concept as the integration between digital content and printing. This track shows you how to implement a W2P project, how to achieve success and which segments to target.

An esteemed group of speakers cover this important topic at Image and Print World. Business Solutions Conference

Begoña Giralt
Iberia HP Indigo – Inkjet Web Press. Marketing manager
Barcelona Spain

Christopher Bondy
RIT – Rochester Institute of Technology. Administrative Chair, School of Media Sciences
Rochester. USA

Jordi Serchs
Ajuntament de Barcelona, Institut de Cultura. Director de l’Arxiu Fotogràfic de Barcelona
Barcelona. Spain

Tony Hodgson
PODi Director in Europe
London. UK

Jennifer Matt
Web2print Experts, Inc. President
San Francisco. USA

Javier Rigal Service Point
Managing Director
Madrid. Spain

Join me tomorrow, Wednesday, March 27 @ 1pm Eastern for an educational webinar sponsored by BCT.

Online Commerce & Print Distributors: The Opportunity

Print Distributors need to be online for one reason – that’s where their customers are! Commerce is moving online, it will be the primary way you interact with your customers in the future. Self-service transactions via an online solution is a differentiator because it saves your customers time and money. Join us for a webinar on how to transition your business online while maintaining relationships and margins.

Register Here

I remember many times when people in large companies would say, “everyone is in sales.” I agreed with that statement in the offline world. Everywhere you went, everything you did could be viewed as an opportunity to recognize potential sales. I never believed you could source “sales” to only the people who had that title – it takes a whole company to sell, because how you treat your existing customers, sets you up for the next sale.

You can either be setup to fail or setup for it to be brilliantly easy. I’ve worked in companies where the treatment of the existing customer leads to what would be the equivalent of a half court shot in basketball (very hard and unlikely to happen). And I’ve worked at companies where the treatment of current customers leads to a glowing referral and the next customer shows up (as easy as a layup).

In the online world, I think a more apt statement is, “everyone is in marketing”. Everything you do online isn’t sales, its marketing and you can’t source it to just the people who have marketing titles. Your brand is no longer under your tight control – its in the hands of your customers and your employees.

Going online is more than e-commerce, its about content and engagement as well. Your customers are online, your whole company needs to be in a marketing role.

The Dscoop Operations Committee and Jennifer Matt will be holding a meet-up for those whose primary job is software-related. This session will start with an informal exchange of ideas about the software challenges specific to the print industry on topics such as customer integrations (SSO, eProcurement), web-to-print (SEO, variable data, mobile), Print MIS (automation, integration with web-to-print) and more.

Friday, Feb. 22 from 3:00pm – 3:30pm in the Dscoop Booth Theater

Sessions at Dscoop8:

Software: Strategy, Vendor Selection, & Product Management (Part 1)
Jennifer Matt, Michael Enright and Heath Cajandig, Web2Print Experts, Inc.
Level: Foundational/Intermediate

From web-to-print, to workflow, to Print MIS, all printers need to understand software in order to assure that technology projects ultimately solve the business challenges and deliver measureable value. Attend this session if you need to make important software investments or you need to dive into investments you’ve already made and learn how to get more value out of them.

Software: Resource Planning, Integration, & Implementation (Part 2)
Jennifer Matt, Michael Enright and Heath Cajandig, Web2Print Experts, Inc.
Level: Advanced

Virtually all software projects are understaffed and the timelines are overpromised creating a significant gap between the business leader’s expectations and the technical leader’s ability to deliver on those expectations. Attend this session if you want to learn strategies for managing software projects in a manner that assures business and technology alignment and provides a better chance of achieving success.

I wish we could roll back the last decade where we spent almost the entire conversation around web-to-print talking abou technical features and functionality. We could replace that conversation with what’s really important to printers – results (sales results).

Printers need to sell solutions, not just custom manufactured products – web-to-print is an excellent way for printers to “wrap a solution around their manufactured products.”

Web-to-print enables  printers to participate in their customers “brand delivery logistics”.

Don’t stop at producing a quality product, on time, at the right price – extend your value into your customers business and solve the challenges they face after they have committed to the creative and print as one of their communication methods.

Stop thinking about web-to-print as a technology project, its a sales tool!

Join the conversation:

The Dscoop Educational Series Presents:

Achieving Profitable Growth via On-Line Storefronts and Production Automation

Tuesday, November 13, 2012
1:00pm – 2:00pm EST

Register Here

I’m around technical people all the time – this is by choice because it’s my company. I love the art of applying technology to business challenges. I accidentally landed in the print industry (didn’t we all?) so my day-to-day life is filled with looking at the business of print and how technology can improve it.

My natural inclination is to stay in the perspective of sales and business results. Nothing keeps this focus more front and center than running your own business, making payroll, and managing cash flow. I work with mostly technical people, but my natural inclination is sales/business – so this results in some very lively discussions.

In general sales/business people and technology people don’t communicate very well and I think I know why. Sales/business people don’t want to get into the technical details and technical people don’t want to talk about the “why” or the “what” because they are absolutely infatuated with the “how”. We open a discussion with a general statement like; “the business wants to reduce their labor costs in a critically complex business process.” Within seconds (not even minutes) the technical people are off to the “how” races. Diving deep into the technologies they will use, the integrations that are necessary, and the tools required. It’s like someone shot a gun off and said, as soon as you have the slightest understanding – solve it as quickly as possible.

It’s not a race and your initial understanding is incomplete because you lack the key ingredient to getting it right – context. You don’t get context by talking about web services, APIs, or xml, you get context by asking clarifying questions and making an investment into really understanding the “why” and the “what”. The best applications of technology to business problems aren’t great because of the “how” – they are great because they totally nailed the “why” and the “what”. When you jump to the “how” too soon, it’s very predictable what happens – you solve the wrong thing or you don’t solve anything or worse yet you make the whole thing worse! Sound familiar?

What do we do about this?

Sales/business people don’t wait to be asked clarifying questions; proactively give context about what you’re trying to solve. Don’t suggest how the technical people should solve it, just describe the problem, who it impacts, and why they need a solution.

Technical people, resist the urge to jump to “how”, speed doesn’t make you sound smart, it makes you sound reckless. You are jumping to a diagnosis before you know what the problem is, asking questions is the best way to make sure you understand. Ask questions and then reiterate in your own words what you think the business/sales person is trying to solve, for whom, and why. This is the best way to assure you are on the same page.

Don’t get trapped in the “we’ll just document everything and then everyone will be on the same page.” Documents don’t necessarily deliver context, they should, but most of them don’t. Technical people and sales people speak a different language, there are very few people who are fluent in both languages (this is the critical role of the product manager in software development), and so you end up with sales/business people writing documents that technical people think are useless. Then you get technical people writing documents that sales/business can’t understand and therefore ignore.

Communicate more. Have more conversations. Ask more questions. When sales/business people need a technical solution explain these three components: who you’re solving this for, what the challenge is, and why you need a solution. The “who”, “what”, and “why” will anchor the request inside context that is critical for the technical team to understand BEFORE they go develop a solution.

When technical people need to communicate their proposed solution to sales/business, don’t go into great technical detail, you do not impress anyone – you’re simply writing a document that your audience can’t consume. Your job is to reflect your understanding of the problem and then propose a solution that allows the sales/business people to understand the solution. Don’t go crazy into the details with the business. The business/sales people’s job is to approve your approach not comment on every single pixel placement or feature. Just like you don’t have full context over their job, they don’t have full context over yours.

Technology is such an integral part of almost every business decision, improving communication is a great way to increase your batting average for solving business challenges with technology. Couldn’t resist a baseball analogy – How about those SF Giants!

We’ve all been there, you set the alarm for 5am because you are going to exercise, read, research, clean out the files, etc… before the work day starts. Instead you manage to hit the snooze button 24 times and get up at your regular time. Each time I hit the snooze button, I think this is going to be the best 9 minutes of the day!

How many printers out there are hitting the snooze button on transforming their business to compete online and in the digital economy?

How many of you have hit the snooze button for years now?

Its time to reset the alarm, snoozing is no longer an option. I’ve never been a big fan of motivation by fear but there are plenty of things to be afraid of if you haven’t started moving your business online and creating a deeper engagement in the digital economy.

Start.

Today.

Move one step at a time.

Buying technology is not the first step (sorry software guys), answer these four questions before you talk to any vendors.

1. Who are you targeting online? (exact customers)
2. What are you trying to sell them (specific products)
3. How are you going to drive traffic to your site (marketing plan – you need one for both B2B and B2C)
4. What is your preference for technology partnerships (license/buy or subscribe/lease)?

You need a plan, you need your people, you need to commit – - – then and only then do you need technology.

Web to Print: The Answer to Scale and Product Diversification

Tuesday, June 5, 2012 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Speaker: Jennifer Matt, President, Web2Print Experts, Inc.
The web allows you to scale by converting manual, full service interactions to self service/automated interactions. Your customers want to interact with you online; a web to print solution allows you to handle more orders without adding more labor. Product diversification is a must; you can extend your product offering and your reach into existing clients by using web to print to launch additional products and services. You know you’re willing to figure out any challenge the customer throws at you, but how many opportunities are you missing because you don’t promote them online? Come learn why web to print makes sense for scale and product diversification and then how to best approach the transition of moving your business online.

Print Solutions Conference & Expo
www.psda.org/conference
June 4–6, 2012
Baltimore Convention Center
Baltimore, Maryland

The 2012 Print Solutions Conference & Expo is the premier event for distributors of print, marketing and business communications. Join me June 4–6 at the Baltimore Convention Center to stay better informed of emerging trends and best practices, better connected with suppliers and industry partners, better equipped to serve your customers and better positioned in this changing market. Attend to gain insight into new and emerging industry innovations, newly-design educational tracks and three days of rich peer-to-peer networking opportunities. Learn more and register today at www.psda.org/conference.

I wrote a book about Web2Print. All proceeds go to EDSF.org.

HP is printing and distributing it for free at drupa. Pick up a copy if you’re going. I’ll be there May 7-11, hope to run into many blog readers.

If you’re not heading to Germany, no worries. The electronic version of the book will be available from EDSF.org starting May 17 (after drupa).