Because of rapidly changing technologies, every print business is faced with decisions to invest in new hardware and software to change the kind of business they can be in and the way they process their current business. “Change” is the key word here. Change is part of every investment decision you make. Whatever you buy, from a new press to a new CRM, it will cause the people who work for you to have to change the way they are operating.

I’ve been in too many meetings where the investment is being considered by three very different audiences. I’ll call one audience the individual contributors that are the primary actors and actresses in the “play” of your current business. These are the estimators, customer service agents, prepress folks, schedulers, etc., who come to work each day and do their part to keep the business running. The second audience is the technical or IT resources (either in-house or external) whose responsibility might be care and feeding of servers, etc. The third audience is management, ownership, and possibly investors. These are the people that are really focused on the outcomes of the business (the numbers), not necessarily in the details of how the business operates every day.

Often, when considering a new investment—such as a new Print MIS/ERP—leaders will bring a large group of people together to build consensus on the decision. The tricky part about combining these three audiences is that they really see the world from very different perspectives. To win the three audiences over to a change you must address them where they care. So, management is all about understanding what they can report on, how they can monitor the business so they can make better strategic decisions. The individual contributors really care about how this investment might change their everyday lives. The IT folks want to keep their lives simple, not take on too much mission critical responsibility, and have a clear understanding of where to escalate when things go poorly.