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We’ve Moved: From Offline Print Business to PRIMARILY Online Print Business

Where does your business transition start? Changing WHAT you do or HOW you do it? The first step to evolving your business in the digital economy is to transition your existing business from an offline business to a primarily online business (HOW you do your business is leveraging the digital infrastructure).

Friday, January 21, 2011

We've Moved Sign
Late last year I spoke at PIA’s Converge Conference, which gave me a chance to hear Laurie Tucker, Senior Vice President, Corporate Marketing FedEx Service as a keynote speaker. Something she said keeps cycling through my brain. During a strategic planning session in the early 90’s a FedEx consultant said to her, “the web will become your PRIMARY go to market channel.” She commented what a shock that was because internally what FedEx was most concerned about was the loss of their overnight document business due directly to the ability to send documents electronically.

Had FedEx focused their energy on “saving” or “protecting” their overnight document business instead of embracing the internet as a PRIMARY go to market strategy, they would be a very different company today. This story is so pertinent to what we’re currently experiencing in the print industry, but not in the most obvious way. What I love about this story is the fact that FedEx’s first move wasn’t to try to change what they do because of this new technology/digital infrastructure.

FedEx’s first move was to leverage the digital infrastructure to do what they do better.


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About Jennifer Matt

Jennifer Matt is the managing editor of WhatTheyThink’s Print Software section as well as President of Web2Print Experts, Inc. a technology-independent print software consulting firm helping printers with web-to-print and print MIS solutions.

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