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.
It's a question we're hearing a lot since Drupa. And I don't blame the people who ask it. We've had a couple of good years, but we kept mostly to our own market, with a minimum of marketing efforts. And all of a sudden that changed.
Fase 1: technical backbone
We started out for years developing the basic framework of the DMP FLO Suite. Harnassing the power of InDesign Server for Database publishing, digital asset management, web-to-print, content management and the other modules. Initially, the response we got from many prospects and partners was that we should put more effort in the way the software looked. We pretty much ignored them. Because we knew that the time was not right for that. First we had to make sure that we had the functionalities and the base on which we could continue growing.
Fase 2: commercial growth
But that changed. After a a few years the basic system was finished to our satisfacten (well, it will never be finished, we keep working on it). So we started concentrating on the front sites. Simple, sexy, easy-to-use web2print websites, intuitive digital asset management download centers, functional catalog publishing interfaces. These were installed with dozens of customers and a whole lot more end users.
Fase 3: international marketing
And all of that culminated in our current activities. A massive amount of international marketing and PR. We're convinced we've got the best product, and now we're going to convince the rest of the world. Luckily we have a very good marketing partner for this. Four Pees has years of experience with the marketing of graphical software companies. And of course (as usual) we've got some tricks of our own as well.