If you like football, strategy is the end zone, getting the necessary three yards to get another first down is a tactic. Nobody in football gets confused by the objective – you want to get into the end zone. You know where it is, you know what it looks like, each player on the team has a role in getting the ball across that goal line. Some teams do it better than others because they work better together or they have better individual players (e.g. the quarterback or the running back).

With print software, the strategy is a well thought out goal of where you want to be. A data-driven company that operates efficiently, utilizing print software (MIS, web-to-print, production workflow) to automate recurring processes as much as possible. This strategy is rarely understood, often changes, is not well communicated, and keeps moving. Imagine trying to play a football game if the end zone had the following characteristics; we don’t know where it is, we don’t know what it looks like, and it keeps moving!

A tactic in print software is applying a solution to a specific area of your business. For example, I’m going to create a spreadsheet to keep track of the jobs that have been shipped but not invoiced yet to remind me. This tactical step is typically taken by a person who plays a limited role on the team (e.g. special teams in football). They don’t understand the big picture of how data flows work in the print MIS or how they could get this information from the MIS if they knew where to look. How does this tactical move impact the overall strategy? One specific tactic like this isn’t going to bring your business down or keep you from making a profit. Take years, or decades of tactics taken by role players with no sense of the end zone and you have a real problem.