Expanding on a previous post, I wanted to unwrap the discussion of "Digital ERP” a bit. I likened the maturation of the Web business – from a disparate silo of business and technical functions, to a set of standardized business processes and tools acting in concert – to the rise of the ERP. What gave rise to the ERP was the need for the business to bring business processes under control (read: standardization), to coordinate planning and execution of operations into a more centralized view, reduce complexities and disconnects from business and system integration challenges, and ultimately, to encourage the elimination (or reduction) of business and technical silos. I see remarkable similarities in evolution of the Web business. Think about the silos that exist in the vast majority of organizations: Marketing/Digital Advertising • Advertising • SEO • Traffic Analytics • Campaign Tracking • UX and Media Platform eBusiness/eCommerce • RIA and Social • CRM • Search & Personalization • Merchandising • WCM & DAM Infrastructure/IT • Web Servers/ Databases • Hosting • Security • Storage • Integration While these three sample focus areas have a great degree of similar interests they are often owned very distinctly within large enterprises. In some sense this is done because of practicality but also because there are no solutions available in the marketplace that help an organization holistically deliver digital advertising-eCommerce-Infrastructure in a cohesive fashion. The ‘Digital ERP’ would seek to address this deficiency. See a high level view of this type of solution below: