Follow the Old Gray Lady into the Future
Good morning, fellow leaders. As you know, boosting E-business has been on my mind of late, and my attention got a lot more focused last week when the editor of the New York Times, the Old Gray Lady of newspapers, announced that they will no longer be publishing a print edition of the paper in five years. Yep, all the news that’s fit to print will be coming to you completely online by 2012. And that’s not just because of sagging newsstand sales. According to the editor this is a strategic decision by the Times because the Internet is the future location of all of the present “print” media. Besides, he noted that the NYT has ten times as many subscribers online as in print. Both in terms of influence and ad revenue, the writing for him is on the wall. Pretty soon they’ll change their slogan to “All the News That’s Fit to Digitize”. This was earth moving news in the newspaper business, I can tell you.So what does this mean for your business? It means that developing your E-platform for sales and customer relations better be the focus of your interest and your investment for the next five years. Regardless of your product, customer, or market range, you must set a goal of doing 50% of your present business through online avenues, or face irrelevancy.
It’s that simple. And that profitable.
As always, if you have any stories or questions to share, I’d love to hear them!
Joe Pursch
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