Last week I sat listening to a sales pitch. The subject: document handling. The young woman giving the sales pitch had all the prerequisites: friendly, articulate, earnest (great shoes, too). But something unnerved me. Throughout her spiel, she kept using the term strategic to describe how her company approached document handling versus the competition. And all I could think was, if strategic is used to sell document handling, what meaning does it have left anymore?

In all fairness, maybe a document handling company’s approach can be strategic. As a start-up, we’re not in the position to buy a strategic solution, so I was naturally a bit detached. I guess buying a copier, laser printer, scanner, and phone system separately would be considered tactical. But does buying them all from one source make it more of a strategic purchase? So while sitting there in my chair, sipping ice coffee and nodding attentively, I had a brief out of body experience. I found myself thinking: Is this what the majority of the digital industry has started to sound like?