mStoner changes—and stays the same

Have you ever had the experience of something being simultaneously extraordinary and routine? That’s how I feel about mStoner’s recent big news. Last month we completed the acquisition of our long-time technical partner, Global Image.

This acquisition is extraordinary for us because it’s a big change in terms of mStoner’s corporate structure. In essence, our company just doubled in size. OTOH, it doesn’t seem as if anything has changed. To understand why I’m feeling so bipolar at the moment, some history might help.

I first met Rob Cima, Global Image’s (now-former!) CEO, in 1997 when GI acquired ArachNet, the company that had provided technical support on some of my first web projects. Shortly after that acquisition, ArachNet’s principals moved on to other things, leaving Rob and me to figure things out. We have worked together ever since, with his team providing software development and a variety of technical services for every web project I’ve done, either in my former practice or at mStoner.

For me, one of the interesting aspects of our partnership was that Global worked in businesses outside of education, giving me exposure to new horizons. For instance, they launched an inventory system for a startup that used PalmPilots and the web to sync orders for small retail stores: at the time, a very innovative project.

Also, GI’s work with banks, health care institutions, and other kinds of businesses brought them into contact with tools that hadn’t yet come on the radar of our .edu clients. Excited about what we were learning in these other venues, we attempted to bring some of those advancements to our clients in education. Some of these attempts didn’t stick, but, happily, our early experiments introducing content management systems hit the mark. Even though today most education websites use a content management system of some kind, a decade ago—when we built the first .edu websites using CMSs—that was unheard of.

In 2001, Rob joined Voltaire and me in founding mStoner, signing on as a partner but running Global Image as a separate business. He even financed our launch until we could bring in enough work to support ourselves (for a little while, Voltaire and I were actually Global Image employees).

As mStoner grew, our ties with Global Image became broader and deeper. More and more of Global’s work became focused on education as the needs of our clients expanded. Our companies worked together so well that some clients didn’t know we were actually two companies. Yet, over time, we realized that we could improve client service through even better coordination of processes across the two companies and even stronger collaboration between our teams. Finally, at some point, it became apparent to all of us that it just made sense to integrate mStoner and Global Image in fact, as well as operationally.

To be clear, this change isn’t really about corporate structure. Incorporating technology and software development as a core function within mStoner allows us to be more strategic and responsive in serving client needs. As a company, we’ve always emphasized that sound strategy precedes technology (or, for that matter, design or implementation of any kind). But today, great websites need sophisticated technology. We believe that our new configuration can provide that kind of integration for our clients—whether we’re building a website, an iPhone app, a marketing campaign, or something we haven’t yet dreamed up.

Posted by Michael Stoner
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Categories: Change management / Real life