Readers identify over-enthusiastic marketing as the reason that users have been fooled into believing that computers are easy. The problem is that businesses now have no choice, everything needs to be computerized so many business owners now suffer from a new syndrome: Computer insecurity.
Following my BackSpin column of a couple of weeks ago about corporate hippos that screw up project plans, Douglas Davis (Manteno, Ill.) wrote to tell me I am “the great white hunter of all things hippo and gorilla (you know, the 3,000 pound ones that always get their way).”
Davis also pointed out that “Those hippos normally live in a watering hole known as Marketing. They tend to swim out to you and upset your boat then return to the Marketing waters to wait under the surface for the next up and coming target.”
In fact, many other writers sided with Davis in saying marketing is responsible for many of the ills that plague our industry both inside and out.
Now I would suggest that before we pick up our pitchforks and head off toward the marketing department, we consider what their real purpose might be. Marketing should be the bridge between sales and development. They should take market intelligence (from sales and other sources) and use that to shape product design and engineering and translate the results into packages that sales can sell.
The three groups are like the legs of a stool, all interdependent. Take one away and the whole thing falls over.
That said, there’s little doubt that in many organizations marketing is out of control and nowhere can we see this more than in the computer business, which led me to last week’s column. In that piece I suggested the industry has dirty secrets and you replied with two main observations: First, much of the overselling of computers is purely marketing driven and, second, computers are much harder to use than the punters are told.
My wife is a victim of computer industry marketing. She’s starting an apparel company and what is remarkable is that pretty much every aspect of that business requires computerization. She thought it would be fairly straightforward. Hah!
To begin with, it turns out that the manufacturing of clothing now relies on computers to cut and shape garments. Her company’s products are complex to make and require extensive hand finishing which not one manufacturer in Asia would touch because they all use computerized systems! Luckily her company found a Los Angeles manufacturer who loves the line so they are now fortunately good to go.
But that was just the tip of the digital iceberg for her. There’s the thousand and one tasks her company faces in getting Quickbooks set up, integrating that with the online ordering system and the fulfillment house and the accountant, setting up and managing e-mail, getting groupware to work … it is a long list and getting it to all work together is anything but simple.
My wife is smart and a fast learner but she can’t learn fast enough to feel comfortable with all of the technology she’s taking on and becoming committed to. And she’s not alone: I’ve talked to many small business owners who feel more overwhelmed by their computers than by their businesses.
My wife’s main problem is she keeps finding that, what she thinks should be easy to do with computers just isn’t. The result is what my wife refers to as “computer insecurity.”
I fear that computer insecurity may turn out to be one of our biggest business challenges in the next few years. It looks like, in my role of the Great White Hunter, I’m going to have my work cut out for me.
Gibbs ranges the wilds of Ventura, Calif. Sit around the campfire at backspin@gibbs.com.
