As a former CRM implementer and developer for over 10 years, in company after company (regardless of industry), I saw many examples of organizations who acquired the latest technology, but had not applied as much effort toward verifying that it was used to its fullest capacity. In today’s marketing organizations, repeatedly, I see a handful of different client-oriented teams or departments, various disciplines (print, digital, social-networking/PR) that operate mostly as “silos” that share some information as needed, but otherwise relegate a majority of their hard-fought former projects to the “information wasteland”. In addition, since most agencies revolve around a collection of largely “creative-focused” disciplines, there is a profound lack of process structure. These arrangements may effectively deliver “the goods” for clients as deadlines come and go, but on a historical and collaborative level, there is too much talent, good ideas, and “information efficiency” that is never realized.
I have compiled five quick, simple considerations that every agency, regardless of their structure should ponder to see if their own organization could benefit from improvements. For grins, we will say, “You might need an “information infrastructure remodel” if…(my apologies in advance to Jeff Foxworthy):
1. If key executives do not have immediate visibility, via an “executive dashboard” or other business intelligence system, into new business statistics, you may need an I.I.R.
Quite simply, what this means is that I should be able to spontaneously ask a top agency executive, “Do you know the dollar amount of new business in your pipeline set to close next quarter?” or “What division sold the most business last quarter?” Or, basically, I could ask any question along those lines, and the executive should have a place to go to in under 5 minutes to get the answer and “drill down” into details that comprise that number. If it isn’t that easy, your system is not working for you. The system, of course, won’t get the business for you, but if your organization is getting the business, you should be able to answer high-level questions such as this without any considerable effort.
2. If you (or everyone in your organization) receives emails from random departments about tasks that are due for a specific system you have nothing to do with….you may need an I.I.R.
Sometimes, when companies where I’ve consulted here me bring this to their attention, their first reaction is to be a little defensive, possibly “embarrassed” to realize that this is happening in their organization. The good news is, if this is your company, you’re not alone. This is actually one of the most common things I see in today’s agencies. Accounting will send an email about some sort of financial information that is needed by some “manager level” in the organization. Shipping and receiving will send emails about “sign offs” that are required before the end of the day by a certain small group of individuals. You name it, I’ve seen it. The point is that the communication strategy of “send it to everyone and no one will miss it” is not only a security concern, but believe me, they’ll probably miss it. Your interdepartmental systems should be designed to trigger “workflow” that targets only the individuals required for a task, but no one else. These systems can be designed to work “the way you do” and if something is missing, it should be immediately noticeable by the person or people monitoring the process.
3. If the way to request something from another department or vendor is to “just call or go find them and tell them what we need”, then you might need an I.R.R.”
Okay, so this one might not be as obvious to all companies in all situations, but the basic scenario goes like this. An account manager tells an account coordinator, “we need this artwork for this project at this time. Go find Bill and tell him and if he has any questions or problems, we’ll meet about it and clear it up.” Now, I’m not suggesting that meetings for clarification are a bad idea. Instead, I am simply trying to point out that there should be a “defined process”, for the protection of both sides of the request, for making a request and the steps it must take. It most certainly might evolve over time, but today’s systems can be flexible in details. I’m also not suggesting that an agency must implement “loads of bureaucracy”. At a minimum, information on what,why,where, who, and when must be gathered. Obviously, the more detailed the information is, the more it might help when researching projectshistorically, but fighting the urge to create something overly complex is also critical.
4. If vendor or partner participation and progress on a project is a “black box”, then you might need an I.R.R.
This can be a very “political” issue for any agency, but the more expectations can be set up front for how the project or tasks will conduct business, the better it will be for everyone. Working in teams is unavoidable these days. These teams are most often in remote locations. Do your team members share everything by email? Do they spend a good portion of conference calls asking who has the latest document, where to find it, etc? These scenarios have so many negative repercussions that I don’t have enough time to go into them all here. To get to the bottom of it quickly, if these scenarios exist, your agency must, without hesitation, investigate the use of collaboration technologies and help clients and partners to understand that these technologies will be used and why they will be used.
5. If you can’t quickly determine the relationship of projects, customers, campaigns, social networking strategies, etc, you might need an I.R.R.
This final point is loaded with a ton of detail, but the premise is the same no matter what specific “items” we discuss. I should be able (given my “need to know” in an agency) to quickly determine how certain items relate, the documents, graphics, or other tangible “assets” created for that project (and when and by whom). In addition, all email, phone, or other important notes about a campaign, any item produced as a result of that campaign, etc, should be stored in such a way that the agency can retrieve it for use or analysis later. What if a client comes to an account manager 5 years in the future, concerning an item considered “insignificant” at the time and says, “I want to do something exactly like THAT item we produced at that time”. To take it further, what if all the people who worked on the campaign at the time have moved on and are unavailable for comment? There might be some documents “floating around” on the file server, but unless your system supports such information retrieval and gathering, it is not serving you to its fullest capacity.
Every organization is, of course, different and therefore the ideal solution to any challenge will be unique to that company. However, the good news is that technology has evolved to a point where most solutions are integrated, cross-compatible, and much more cost-effective than they once were. In a future blog entry, I will cover some very basic criteria to consider when “upgrading your information infrastructure” as an agency. Fortunately, today’s vendors make these considerations fairly easy to address, and that is great for you. Do you have information/communication challenges in your agency that are not covered here? Please feel free to comment and let me know your thoughts.
Tags: advertising agency, Business, Business intelligence, Company, Customer relationship management, marketing, Organization, Technology
