Joeri Paeleman is one of the owners and founders of DMP. As key developer of the DMP FLO Suite software, he's got a thing or two to say about both the technical background, and the ways in which the DMP FLO Suite is implemented by the customers.
All too often, an inhouse publishing or marketing department is not able to turn completely to the IT department for help in setting up marketing tools. We see that more and more of our customers are taking up this role instead. Offering help with the development of customized web2print applications or highly specialized database publishing workflows.
Priorities
Very often, the reason for this is that the internal IT department has different priorities. Supporting the companies core business, for example. And who can blame them? If the logistic operations aren't running, marketing doesn't really have a point. If the invoicing goes wrong, the company will go down regardless of the best marketing efforts.
Cross media publishing specialization
But there's also the fact that the internal IT department usually doesn't have the necessary experience to set up all of the required applications. A website is pretty much common knowledge for most IT departments. But marketing tools no longer work as isolated applications. The website needs to be connected to the product database. The product database is needed to generate printed catalogs. The catalogs need to be sent to the customers. Preferably personalized. And so on. And it is considerably more easy to gain experience in website design than in graphical output. Programmers usually do not have a lot of knowledge about graphical processes.
Ulterior motives
And there are other advantages. Some printing companies set up separate marketing support departments, with their own targets and business. But in most cases, these services are set up to help promote the core business. Printing. And this often means that the support of and dedication to the service is of a much higher quality. Because happy customers not only mean more business in the service. It also means continuous printing orders. This way, everyone comes out a winner.