Why Clients and Agencies Need to Take a Holistic Approach to E-Business

The most successful e-business implementations excel, not just by being great in one area, but by being good in all areas and great in some areas.

Critical E-Business Success Factors

• Clear business vision and measurable goals
• A marketing plan that drives your campaigns and programs
• Scalable and diversified advertising channels
• A technology framework that is secure, reliable, extensible and agile
• Brand growth, management and evolution
• Customer support
• Alignment of enterprise activities with vision and strategy

On the Front-lines of Business Development in an Interactive Agency

In the past 30 days, I received the following calls from prospective Pop Art clients:

Company 1 asks: We need you to “redesign” our front-end graphics.
Company 2 asks: We need you to “rebuild” our e-commerce back-end.
Company 3 asks: We need you to do some “online advertising” for us.

The problem with all three of these examples is that the customer is seeking a specific service rather than a holistic solution.

Risks of Point Solutions to Both the Client and the Agency

• The agency delivers a great service, but it is optimized for the point solution the client has requested rather than the customer’s holistic needs.
• It is difficult and expensive for the agency to get up to speed on the company’s holistic needs if the agency is working in only one functional area. Success in a given functional area will be limited if silos prevent collaboration with other functional areas.
• The client is unbundling the agency’s overall solution into specific services. This disrupts the agency’s methodology and erodes its value proposition. This also draws a lopsided use of resources from the agency, increasing project costs.
• The client is taking total responsibility for strategy, and relegating the agency to a tactical implementation role. This makes the projects less rewarding for agency team members and doesn’t give the agency a chance to show its business smarts.

There are times when it might make sense for both the client and the agency to engage in a purely tactical project designed for a point solution. However, in those situations, the client and agency should be conscious of the above risks and take specific steps to mitigate them.

Tips for Successful Relationships with an Interactive Solutions Agency

E-business projects are not primarily about graphic design or software development or advertising. While all of those are critical disciplines, they are the last factors to which you need to pay attention!

• First think Strategy, then think Planning, then think Implementation. If you want to be agile, the agency working on implementation must also be involved with business strategy and planning; otherwise, it becomes too hard to switch directions. Furthermore, you don’t want to play the game of “Telephone” whereby strategic intent is watered down and misconstrued because the people implementing the strategy weren’t able to interact directly with the strategic leaders.
• E-business is incredibly cross-disciplinary. The key to success is culture more than technology. The job of the client executive is creating stakeholder alignment and a culture where people working on the project are working together effectively and feeling that they are having a meaningful impact on the business.
• Understand what motivates your agency and the people who work there. Make sure your agency understands your company and your motivations. Be willing to compromise to establish a partnership that maximizes the total rewards of the relationship.
• Very few agencies are good at everything. Understand what services your agency wants to provide and what additional services they are willing to provide. Understand your agencies strengths and weaknesses. If you have multiple agencies, make sure that they know their roles, and that they are collaborating and playing well together.

Pop Art’s Holistic Approach to E-Business:

1. We start with a broad assessment. We love reading business plans and marketing plans; we also love helping customers to create those documents if they don’t already exist.
2. We explore and document internal stakeholder needs. What is the sales team seeking from the e-commerce solution? What do the product managers want? What does IT want? What does Operations want? After a couple group sessions, we typically design a survey and do brief 1:1 interviews with at least the top 10 stakeholders. Often this produces unique insights into the business. For example, the operations team may be aware of a valuable new market opportunity that was not previously presented to us. We then share our findings with our key stakeholders, and they have us present them back to their broader teams where appropriate.
3. We explore and document the needs of our customer’s customers. Through segmented focus groups, surveys and 1:1 interviews with customers we are able to validate the business case and gain valuable insight into the psychology and demographics of the target audience. This also helps us produce meaningful customer interactions when we implement the e-business system.
4. We examine research, competitive analysis, 3^rd party solutions and industry trends and best practices to present our clients with knowledge and to help them finalize their goals and implementation plans. This allows us to sign-up for strategies and goals where we feel ownership and ability to guarantee our client’s success.
5. Armed with proper information about the business case, we adapt Pop Art process to the client’s needs and present the client with implementation plans and choices so that the client can make optimal decisions for their business based upon their preferences for balancing costs, assurance, time-to-market and total return.

Taking a holistic approach requires extra effort at the start of the project. However, once you try it, you’ll never go back. Point solutions are simply too risky, too expensive and not very fun. Holistic approaches will lead to better alignment within your organization and its markets while producing maximum ROI and smooth sailing for all of those involved.

Feel encouraged to post comments regarding challenges and successes you have experienced when taking a holistic approach.