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Bridging the Chasm Between IT and Internet Marketing
During the late 80’s and early 90’s, many companies, in an effort to facilitate the creation of their Internet presence, shifted control of the website and Internet technologies from their IT department to their marketing, or e-Commerce department. “They wanted us to be fast, nimble, and completely unencumbered by the bureaucratic processes that existed in the IT department,” said one e-commerce director. Many executives were sold on the idea that current IT department procedures simply wouldn’t fly in the Internet space – we needed to be much, much faster than that.
For many companies, this proved to be a great strategy. Nimble e-commerce groups created websites and strategies quickly and started producing almost immediate results. However, this approach has lost its luster over the past few years as IT departments are finding their budgets shrinking and staff stagnating. In some companies where the IT department has not had a significant hand in Internet strategy and web site development, a great deal of animosity has grown on the part of IT managers toward anything “Internet,” including Internet marketing. Migrating from an exclusionary mindset to a collaborative mindset is not something that comes easily to some companies....
