Joe was feeling the chill of a looming shadow: high-speed scanning, desktop publishing high-end imaging and the rise of the Internet was bringing website development. It was making Joe’s expensive equipment and processes affordable for everyone. Soon, they wouldn’t need Joe.

 

But, now clients were asking Joe to provide more marketing-type services, especially website design and development. And their IT groups wanted them to develop large website database applications (data warehousing, etc.) Joe’s crew had the know-how. Why not?

 

At this point, most new IT departments and well-entrenched marketing departments were at war over control and funding. It would take a decade at least for most marketing and IT people to see that websites should function as part of the overall marketing strategy. (Remember when websites often didn’t even have the same logo or other brand identity elements as the company’s literature?)  ...more