51076484 in house management versus management outsourced (1)

7/28/2019 51076484 in House Management Versus Management Outsourced (1)

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InIn--house Managementhouse Management

versus Managementversus Management

OutsourcedOutsourced

Module III


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Why a Sense of Skepticism and Unease

Towards Management Consultants

5 Pros and Cons

Pros:

1. Specialized - you can get the best

2. Personal attention from a senior practitioner

3. Each campaign treated uniquely

4. Holistic view - consultant is intimately aware of all

aspects of the campaign5. Relationship - its easier to form a long term

relationship with the owner/operator than anaccount rep that may change jobs


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Cons:

Specialized - yet another vendor to manage

Has to wear many hats (eat what they kill)

Physical limitations on number of clients that can

be serviced Can be more expensive per hour

Limited in the number of things that can be donewell


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Cost versus Value of Advice: What can big

companies do today? Organize. Hire an in house

search specialist or project manager, who should be

a strong communicator along with a strong

understanding of SEO Establish an internal team may include

Person from technology

Marketing

Editorial/content production

Product development

Strategic planning

Sales

Then analyze the data and the roles,- the goal is tonot

become beholden consultants. Lastly, educate,


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W

hen to seek outside help? For a core competency outside your

department. If you do not have the time

and resources, a buy in from the top, it is

not worth the time to bring in a consultantor imbedded There has to be a strong

commitment from leadership toperform.


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There are 3 options that should

be considered to be the bestmodel for the company. All outsourced (what most people do)

Hybrid, and all in house.

People have started to think along the lines of Ican build a great team for the $2 million that I amspending on Project Management

This is a growing problem for agencies that need

to provide value Another question to consider: is the current

model working?


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What is the culture?Will vendors fit in, and howare they managed? For the execution, ask what

is the labor resource required?What arecustomized toolsdo we need somethingcustom?

For cost efficiency,What is the total cost of each

program?What are the barriers toimplementation and what will the costs be toovercome them? In measuring/predicting timeand success,, he feels that in the end some formof hybrid marketing will rule.

You can do well completely in house, especiallyfor the low-hanging fruit


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Then there are more advanced things that mayrequire help such as architectural issues and more

advanced coding problems. So, if you are going with completely in house:

spend time at conferences, understand youmarket share.What are you getting versus what

your competitors are getting. Completely outsourced: It isnice to have

someone to assign the work to, but youstillneed to remain educated,inorder tonot go

in the wrong directions. Remember that youwill also have toguide the consultant,especially for keyword selection andcopywriting, as well as link building.


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The larger the company the more complexthe politics,usually.

What are the questions to figure out before hiring

someone? What is the staff t- client ratio?

What is the employee turnover rate?

W

hat is the level of customization?W

hat isthe standard deliverable, and what will costextra? How doesprocess, training, and onboarding work? Lastly: Meet your team. At

the end of the day it is about the people whoare working with your business.


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Share data. It may take longer tobecome comfortable with sharing

sensitive data, but when you can,it willimprove performance. Invest inlearning, and plan for long termgains.

Reward success structure somethingin the contract togive agency extra

based onperformance. Push for

innovation and exceptional results.


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Summary of the pros and cons

of being in-house: Pros: Strong connection to the product / service

offering and in depth understanding of the industryand top competitors.

Concentrated focus on servicing just one client insteadof balancing the needs of multiple clients.

It may be less expensive to maintain internalresources, depending on the size and experience of theteam.

Timely and complete access to forecasts, sales data,inventory, etc.

Better integration and coordination with otherinternal departments, including: marketing,merchandising, IT, and finance.


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Cons to being in house: Many of the best consultants are extremely

competitive individuals, yet internal positions donot usually foster this competitive spirit.

There is often a sense of boredom and eventuallack of motivation that comes with continually

working on the same site as opposed to newchallenges and opportunities.

As part of a small internal team there is often alack of informal learning opportunities which

inhibits professional growth and the ability todeliver in a rapidly changing environment.

With a single in house resource, you will beconstrained to a single set of strategies, as

opposed to best of breed solutions that resultfrom an inte rated team a roach.


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Professionals are rarely equally trained or

experienced in both organic optimization

and paid search marketing

You may be sacrificing by relying on one

resource or investing in a larger team. It is

often difficult to drive organizationalchange from within.

External resources are needed to justify

priorities, directional change, and budgets.


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At the moment across the ecosystemthere doesnot seem to be a single

model that is totally dominant.We havesome web analytics teamsincompanies that are all in-house.Wehave a whole bunch that are sort of a

hybrid,some work done in-house butmost of the work done by individualoutside Consultants or via one of thelarger web analytics consultingCompanies. There are fewercompletely out-sourced models forsome reason.


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So here is a framework to think through stageof the journey and some characteristics of eac

stage.


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Stage One: BirthWhat doesit look like?

You have nothing,no web analyticsimplementationor a really new one.

You are just gettingstarted but havesome support frommanagement.

What do youneed?

1)W

eb analytics toolsimplementation.2) Show promise from data andconvert the masses.


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What is your role?

1) Find the most senior person who

owns your company policies andassign them the accountability fordeliverables.

2) Don t expect perfection and don tpick the most expensive tool and don t

pay the consultant lots and lotsof

money upfront (you ll do that later).

3) Ask tospeak to a client that theconsultant has recently lost.


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What is the consultant s expected role?

1) Talk to the client owner a lot and

some data consumers.2) Help you find and implement thebest fit first tool fast. (Suggestedvendor selectionprocess.)

3) Teach younot tomake mistakes alltheir other clientsmake.

4) Do lotsof trainingsessions and dog

and pony shows around your company(makes you look good and showspromise of what spossible).


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What should you be careful about?

Most of what will be done in thisstage will be

thrown away later, and it isok. Make sureyouset that expectation with your internalcompany customers /partners. As your firstphase targets choose people who have dataaffinity and your friends (so they ll stick withyou through the birthingpains),mostdefinitely don t over-stretch and give 500people login accounts to your new webanalytics application.

What do youpay consultants?

Small dollars,more frequently.


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Stage Two: Toddler to Early

Teens What doesit look like?

You have wonover a few converts, the

consultants are pumpingin reports thatpeople are using and you are drowninginquestions,some people have started tocomplain about the fact that they don t knowwhat action to take, the VP of Marketing iswondering why we keep changing the sitebut the analytics tool isnot telling them whyconversion rate is tanking.


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What do youneed?

1) Consider hiring a Web Analyst to be the

in-house resident expert,someone who llcollect tribal knowledge and be on the beckand call of the VP.2) Customized solutions for your business

(because you have realized you are uniqueand standardized KPI s from books don tapply to you).3) You will find lotsof data ismissing andthe tags are not right so you will need a

massive effort toupdate your tags andcollect new data (say site structure,siteoutcome details,new cookies/parameters,campaignmeta data etc).


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What is your role?

1) Help fill the Analyst position assoon

as you can (look for acumen, curiosityand simple web smarts).2) Have the consultant spend a lot of

time on the problem talking to thepeople who run your businesses.

3) Find out what the financial goals are

for the project or problem, look for

benchmarks, find out how the successof others channelsis beingmeasured .


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1) Really understand your businessand your businesssuccess criteria and

bring their business acumen to thetable (vs. tool expertise inStage 1).

2) Create those aforementionedcustomized solutions that incorporate

core financial or other goals for key

metrics toshow real success.


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3) Help youput standardsinplace to

capture meta-data that youneed to dooptimal analysis (meta data round

campaigns,products, website

customers etc). The consultant has to

help younail all the data problems(either missing data or bad data) in thisstage.

4) Teach you how to do reporting for

yourself.


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Thisis a very painful stage for you, the

client. There ismore data than you candigest and yet it means little. Be patient,practice zen.You very deliberately want tobring reportingin-house now mostly because

it will be cheaper for you to do (and a greatway to train your Analyst) and you reallywant to focus the consultant on doing trueand powerful analysis (and teaching you thatas youmove from toddler to a teen).


Mediumsized dollars, less frequently.


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Stage Three: The WildYouthW

hat doesit look like? Problems and analysis rule the roost.

Your conversion rate (or Problem

Resolution Rate for support sites) hasdoubled from 1% to 2%.Your decision

makers have realized that PathAnalysisis a waste of time.

You have extracted all you can fromyour data Analytics tool.


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What do youneed?

1) Experimentation and Testingexpertise, to realize you are wrong

about what your customers want.

2) Youneed tostart movinginto

collecting Qualitative data (for examplesurveys).3) Help creating a strategy that would

integrate all the new piecesof data youwill capture.


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What is your role?

1) Expand your teamin the company toget other bright people involved on

problem and solution analysis.

2) Identify decisionmakers whoget

Customer Centric Decision Making andcozy up to them (you ll need theirsponsorship / air cover /money).


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1) Bring tools and expertise to the tablefor these new things you know nothing

about.

2) Knowledge transfer (because soon

the general ideas won t bear hugefruits and you ll have to bring businessexpertise to the table) and

implementing best practices.


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3) Help youintegrate your various datasourcesso that you can do analysis for

survey responsesor figure our multi-channelimpact of your experiments/tests.


Start with modest goals and don t

underestimate the immense resistance you llget from your company culture. It is veryhard for companies to truly have a customercentric mindset and at very step youshouldbe prepared tomassage egos and re-frame

thingsso that they let you bring customervoice to the table and not just kill it becauseof their opinions.


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Create case studies when you do agreat test or find out a huge nugget of

information via the Research work.(itwill pay you back big).


Big sized dollars, a bit initially and thenonly periodically.


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Stage Four: Maturity

What doesit look like?

You have truly implemented something

akin to the Trinity. You don t have

enough people to do the analysis work.


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What do youneed?

1) New and different ways to capture data.

2) More people.3) Create self sustainingprocesses that feedactive decisionmaking.4) Maybe another challenge! : )

What is your role? 1) Chief Cheerleader.

2) Find the right talent.3) Find Insights fromSix Sigma and Process

Excellence (booksmaybe).4) Truly consultants who really don t domuch work except come talk to you and giveyouideas.


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1) For the new technologies you are tryingyou will need helpinunderstandingthem and instrumentingnew waysofcapturing data.2) Bring truly radical outside perspectives(that a select few consultantsin the worldhave) that will both energize you but alsohelpinfluence strategy (vs. KPI sor pagedesign).


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You are going to be in very rarefied air,make sure your organization has the

appetite for risk and they back you.You willmake more mistakes here (but you will alsowin big), be prepared for it and make sure

that that isok. Ensure that you don t gosoprocess crazy that people have meetings

and dographs just for the sake of processmeetings (this happens all the time).Your

personal job is tomotivate your team(analytics/research/web/whatever) and keepthe organizationon the right track time andpeople evolve.


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Huge sized dollars, infrequently.

It s that simple.

There are many great consultants /consulting companies.Some of them

have different sizes and specialties butthey all know what they are doing


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Future trendsy The numbers of both in-house and

agency will decline; this drop will bepartially countered by growth in self-employed consultants.

An interesting uptick in the number of

those "not employed" in Induvidualadvisers(IAs). Considering how thisnumber had steadily declined, this issomewhat surprising, but manyrespondents indicated that they'd moveinto management, broader work, or newactivities altogether. This is supported bypredictions in what portion of our jobswill be dedicated to IA in the future. IA

ain't the end-all-be all


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Thank you

51076484 in house management versus management outsourced (1)

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