Lunge or Parry: The Role of an Internet Strategist

An Internet Strategist is an underused yet much-needed part of any contemporary business.  Novell says an Internet Strategist “sets an organization's Internet direction through a thorough understanding of Internet technology and its possible use in increasing productivity, expanding an organization's marketing reach, and reducing customer support costs.”  The American Electronics Association calls an Internet Strategist a “marketing expert who can figure out how to handle marketing in a still-evolving new medium.”  I define an Internet Strategist as a Management Information Systems specialist who can solve business problems using new information technology.  According to the Novell course materials on the subject, an Internet Strategist’s responsibilities on the web team are to “select a web site host, register the web site, set up the electronic commerce account, and advertise the web site.”  No matter how you slice it, any company hoping to survive in the new economy needs someone who can best utilize technology.  An Internet Strategist fills that role.

What an Internet Strategist Provides to Today’s Businesses

Changes in today’s technology present more of a challenge than figuring out how to share the office calendar online.  Clients, partners, and employees expect that a business will use technology as a tool to its fullest extent in every situation.  Doing so is possible in most environments, but it requires two important components.  First is an understanding of the extent of the technology’s reach.  Second is the talent to implement needed changes.

The Internet provides unlimited potential as a communication medium and as an application platform.  Some businesses enjoy the breadth of the Internet at their virtual doorstep, but most struggle–spending far too much capital for far too little return.  The presence of a strategic plan for using the Internet as a business tool greatly enhances the return on investment.  This plan is an Internet Strategist’s domain.

Many CIS managers read about the newest technology and then try to find a place in their organization to implement it.  An Internet Strategist starts with business problems and uses his or her knowledge of existing technology to create timely and cost-effective solutions.  For instance, one of my clients–a cash-strapped private charity–needed to provide customers with the means to create a printed directory of the client’s member agencies on the fly from an Internet database.  The document had to be carefully formatted, and printouts of the browser-based web directory would not suffice.  I used Microsoft Word 2000 and XML to create a document that would reside on any remote desktop and would retrieve the directory listing on demand in a predefined format via the Internet.  This cost-effective solution met the client’s need.

An educational research organization I know of that needed a remote application failed to hire the services of an Internet Strategist.  This organization’s “internet Application” ended up a VB 5 client server application with a database that replicated itself in six locations via expensive phone lines.  Only after it experienced a 22% failure rate and spent tens of thousands of dollars did the organization engage an Internet Strategist. 

Such failures are all too common in the Internet industry.  The proliferation of tools like Adobe Pagemill and Microsoft Frontpage lull business owners into a false sense of security about the Internet’s perceived simplicity.  Engaging a specialist who can translate business needs into Internet languages often makes the difference between a successful project and a tremendous waste of capital and manpower.

Complementary Roles of an Internet Strategist

An Internet Strategist interacts with the Marketing team, the Development staff, and the Operations department, as indicated by this Venn diagram.  An Internet Strategist usually works with the decision makers in each division, such as the Directors of Marketing, IS, and Operations.  These positions aren’t titled the same in every organization, but all organizations contain them.  An Internet Strategist enjoys a different relationship with each position.

The Director of Marketing is usually most interested in using the Internet to advertise, market, or sell.  Advertising shows potential new customers the product; marketing convinces prospects that the product is what they want; selling consummates the deal with a customer.  An Internet Strategist’s place in these processes is to best utilize the company’s technology and the Internet’s opportunities to build a system that will maximize profit potential.  To do so, an Internet Strategist is primarily tasked with reviewing marketing strategy while remaining mindful of both the possibilities and limitations of the Internet medium.  An Internet Strategist must be able to say,  “You can’t do that,” but also must be able to say, “You can do it this way, and it’s much cooler.”

Any Internet-related role is often associated heavily with a company’s Information Systems division.  In fact, the IS Director often fills the Internet Strategist role.  When he or she does not, however, the two players must communicate closely.  Developing internal systems and using the Internet in those systems are two remarkably similar tasks that require remarkably similar tactics.  Planning is at the core of this close relationship.  Both positions require the ability to look out two or even five years to create network strategies.

Corporate Operations formulates the internal policies and procedures that assure customers of receiving the product, clients of receiving the information, and associates of getting paid.  The CO Director solves business problems, for which the Internet provides many necessary tools.  The Internet’s communications-laden features lend themselves well to this corporate function–as they do to marketing–and an Internet Strategist once again is expected to provide translations.

In general, an Internet Strategist does not own many processes within a company–with the occasional exception of the corporate web presence and intranet–but he or she acts as a forum for interaction between several business units.  This function requires an unusual set of skills.

Skills Expected of an Internet Strategist

When working with Marketing, Operations, and Development, an Internet Strategist’s greatest challenge is to translate between the specific languages each division of the business uses.  This is like having a communications graduate, an engineering graduate, and an MBA all rolled into one employee.  Marketing, Operations, and IS experience is mandatory, but the skills that complement this experience are even more varied and unusual.

Realistically, the best degree for an Internet Strategist is a Bachelor’s in Management Information Systems from a university with strong engineering and business colleges.  Business skills learned in school will include conceptual accounting, statistics and high math, and technical writing and communication.  Technical skills should focus on system and data design and object-based methodology.  Language doesn’t matter.  Languages come and go on the Internet, but good design lasts forever.

Practical skills vary even more.  Real experience building web applications is a must.  The Internet Strategist is not a froo-froo management position.  Hands-on, up-to-date knowledge of how this all is done is an absolute requirement in order to best translate the needs of the business-side units for the technology builders.  This falls into one of two categories: Microsoft builders (InterDev, Visual Basic, IIS, SQL Server, Windows NT) or Java builders (Java, JSP, OAS, Oracle, Solaris).  The ability to use the Internet in daily business–e-mail, web, file transfer tools, instant messaging, streaming media–is another requirement of the same depth.  Knowledge of the network layer also is expected. 

On the business side, writing is most important, followed by an understanding of the sales and marketing processes.  Other skills many have found helpful include statistical analysis, business experience in several industries, PC skills (such as with Office), traveling experience, reading comprehension, a firm grasp of several sales processes, and creative graphic arts.

Conclusion