There is no shortage of talk about web-to-print technologies; there is too little talk about printer’s online strategies. Printers can talk for hours about how this or that web technology has failed them or this or that technology is what made all the difference. We’re infatuated with the features, and we actually convince ourselves that the next feature enhancement will really move the dial. I’ve never seen a feature do that – ever, the amount of complaining about the feature never equals its impact. What moves the dial is people and process – not technology. People and process are your differentiation, technology is a tool.

I’ve worked at many of the web-to-print solution providers and I’ll tell you a secret – every single one of them has printers that have similar approaches on the web – some have been very successful and others have been total failures, all using the same technology. I’ve seen printers completely fail and blame the technology – generally they can get away with this because the technology isn’t perfect but the reality is that the technology didn’t matter one bit, the printer had neither the people or the process to pull it off with any technology.

A successful web strategy is a combination of people, process, and technology. The challenge is that when things fail, we typically prefer to blame the technology rather than our people or processes. The limiting factor of virtually every web-to-print project I’ve been involved in is the people and the process – not the technology.