Planning-the Parallel Universe

Many years ago some professor or textbook somewhere told me that management was planning, organizing, staffing, contolling and coordinating. Over the years I have found that this is about as good as any definition.

Most are familiar with the basic functions required to run a business. You need a product or service, someone or something to create/produce it, a technique to sell it, someone to count and control the money and some legal assistance along the way. We also know that in most cases, start up funding is limited therby reducing the probability of incorporating each of these functions on staff which results in the business owner or manager making decisions about the functions. Who will be on the payroll, which functions they will outsourced, and who or what will they live without.

The on-line world is a parallel universe. Having or creating a product or service belongs to both universes. You need one or the other or both. Now things begin to change. The sales and marketing departments may become your web developer and SEO (search engine optimizer) person. The developer would provide an effective on line marketing presence and the SEO is there to make sure that the website is found when someone searches for the product or service.

A subset of your marketing department may be your email marketing specialist who would be the direct contact to collected email addressees. Because you may be doing various marketing campaigns that require an ROI (return on investment) your business must also have an analytics function. This function is responsible for understanding the results of website hits, misses, and conversions and to provide a basis for the future on-line marketing campaigns. It would also interpret data used for process improvement.

Just as in the case of more traditional business organizations with limited funding, the business person must prioritize the importance of each function to achieve the objective. A fledgling business might outsource the accounting function while a website business might outsource the SEO function. In fact, in this parallel universe, the website business may choose to outsource most of the functions as they are fairly compartmentalized with each requiring specific training and knowledge.

I think that the important point is to recognize that the parallel universe is comprised of different and specific functions. In a traditional business you may find someone talented and knowledgable enough to manage the finance function and the human resource funtion. In the parallel universe you may find someone who can do both the web development and the SEO functions. However, in the longer view it is not the ideal situation in either case. To mix them up or assume that they are just one function could be a strategic mistake.

Development of an effective on-line business does require those basic management tools mentioned above. It also requires an awareness of all the possibilities of marketing and mechandising that can be used, all the functions required to maximize its success, and the funding available from which to make decisions to allocate those resources.