Do you treat your corporate website development like a cost center or as a revenue multiplier?

If you believe your website has significant influence on people who might buy your products or buy shares of your company's stock, then you probably consider it to be one of the most important tools of your marketing department - even of your entire company.

That's great, but unfortunately technical limitations have forced CEOs to make a choice. Either

 

• put your website into the hands of the Marketing department, but have a website with limited technical functionality, or 
• put it into the hands of the IT department who do not understand customers as well as the Marketing department does. 

 

Both approaches are a serious, sometimes fatal, compromise. Websites like Amazon and Facebook have raised customer expectations, but those new expectations can only be met by having both Marketing and IT working on your website.  Changing reporting structures and moving staff around helps, but doesn't really solve the problem. A Marketing professional working in an IT department is only 50% effective and the reverse is equally true. Current web development products do not take into account the different personalities, nor the fact that you need both your Marketing department AND your IT department working on the task.

Until now. 

ToolTwist is a new web development tool that recognizes the different needs and cultures of Marketing and IT departments. The result is that you can have an industry leading website - like Amazon or Facebook - that is used by your Marketing people to drive sales, but at the same time does not compromise what your IT guys can and must do. Each group can work independently. 

That's the first thing ToolTwist does. The second is to provide management tools that pull this distributed effort back together. Workflows, audit trails, quality assurance, and approval processes are customized for your organization to clarify responsibility, improve communications, and ensure that web development runs smoothly.

How does it work? 

Just as you do not have to be a mechanic to drive a Ferrari, with ToolTwist, you do not have to be an IT guy to build awesome websites. We take the latest web technology and package it up into simple interfaces, called Widgets, that can be used by Marketing people. Your IT department can also create additional Widgets as required.

Changing widgets is like swapping out a car's engine or changing its body parts. The interface remains familiar - steering wheel, gas pedal, brake - the user doesn't need to know the details. You can get into any car and operate it right away.

Similarly, ToolTwist allows your IT department to create whatever functionality would be good for your corporate website, then package it up so it can be easily used by your Marketing department. It doesn't take long, and the consequences are transforming: