Dylan Hicks and Herbie Martin

The marketing technology industry is changing fast. What was breakthrough technology last year, is old news today.

It wasn’t always like that. For decades our specialty, variable data print technology and the industry as a whole, lived in it’s own little bubble. Marginal changes here and there didn’t really impact our customers and didn’t require much investment in staff training.

Today’s print industry has been forced out of it’s slumber due to increased competition from the online communication channels that customize and target programmatically and responsively far more effectively than we were able to do.

So the choice  is to either double down and bury our heads or take a page from other tech industries and promote a more innovative culture that results in continuous improvement and better results for our clients.

In keeping with this we are proud to announce our own internal education and learning program to make Prime Data an even better partner to the clients who depend on our services to succeed.

So I’m pleased to announce that starting this fiscal year we will be putting a greater focus on professional education at Prime Data.  We understand the importance of personal and professional growth.  In fact, one of our stated company values is “always learning“.

To do this we took a page from Verne Harnish’s book, Scaling Up, which recommends budgeting for this so we’ve decided to allocate an amount equal to 2.6% of our payroll costs on education.  And that’s how The Prime Data Institute was born.

It’s not so much a physical Institute of bricks and mortar as a state of mind.  We are “instituting” an environment that encourages and rewards learning.

As part of this initiative we are encouraging staff to get Aurora Public Library cards (available to any employees of an Aurora business) in order to access online courses from Gale Publishing Company on topics from stress management to computer skills.

We’re also extending this emphasis on education to include clients. This will include:

• Upcoming Knowledge Leadership events
• Blogs  about issues affecting the industry
• Client-focused webinars

All of this will further cement Prime Data’s position as a leader in the marketing technology arena going forward and make us an agile and adaptable partner for our clients well into the future.  Oh, and that’s one of our three brand promises, “#1 – To build long-lasting relationships”.