Articles
When clients don't hold up their end of the bargain
By Scott Liewehr
One of the biggest challenges digital marketing agencies (as well as other IT services firms) face is ensuring that clients meet their end of the bargain in terms of performing effectively during engagements. Our agency clients have told us time and time again how client delays, misaligned expectations, and poor communication on the part of their clients often lead to project failures, missed deadlines, and unhappy customers. Unfortunately, this is a common problem that plagues the industry, and it's not always easy to find a solution.Read more >
Staying on-budget won’t impress your customers according to new data
By Scott Liewehr
“I need them to be on-time and on-budget”, is a typical response of senior leaders at most organizations when asked what they’re looking for from their outside consultancies. These staple metrics are often heralded as the gold standard of large projects. Even the U.S. White House, in the second paragraph of its website for its feature legislative initiative, “Building a Better America”, promises to “get the job done on task, on time, and on budget.” Time and cost have been coupled forever, but only one tends to affect the viewpoint of stakeholders when judging the outcome of projects and the people that manage them.Read more >
Fact: risk assessment is the #1 determinant of project success
By Scott Liewehr
Everyone knows that technology projects are laden with risks. But, until now, has anyone ever proven that the anticipation and mitigation of risk is the #1 activity that is most highly correlated with outcomes? Well, it's true. Donald Rumsfeld is famous for describing risks as the "unknown unknowns": "[T]here are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don't know we don't know. And [...] it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones." Read more >
Brands that use in-house IT teams to implement technology have poor outcomes
By Scott Liewehr
In an era where brands are finally getting more pragmatic in their digital pursuits, organizations must be conscious that pragmatism should not lead to corner-cutting, especially when it comes to technology implementations. According to over 1,000 respondents to our VOCalis Voice of Customer survey, project failure rates are highest when brands turn to their in-house IT teams to implement their enterprise technologies rather than hiring a digital services partner (agency, systems integrator, etc). Technology implementations are hard, and picking the right partner to help is absolutely critical (that's why we created this site!). Not only does the implementer have to understand your organization and industry vertical, which in-house IT teams certainly do, but they must also be fluent in both the technology as well as the various competencies required to achieve the brand's strategy. Oftentimes, these latter two disqualify most in-house IT teams, but they are either overlooked, undervalued, or under-budgeted. Read more >
Looking for an implementation partner? Don’t ask your vendor.
By Scott Liewehr
Of the following five “facts”, which one is ‘fake news’? Fact #1: The market for marketing and digital experience technology is hot. Fact #2: Experience technology depends as much on people and process as on its own functional capabilities. Fact #3: Nearly every marketing technology vendor on the planet talks about customer experience, and how it’s a top priority. Fact #4: Experience technology is complex; most organizations that buy it rely heavily on a digital agency or systems integrator (or both) to bring it to life and realize its value. Fact #5: Technology vendors take care to recommend implementation partners with the highest likelihood of success to their customers. If you picked Fact #5, you win! Or you lose. Depending on whether you were one of the enterprise buyers that bet millions of dollars on this assumption. Read more >
What DCG's Partner Finder Brings to the Software Market
By Venus Tamturk and Laura Myers
The importance of having the right technology in place is hard to overestimate. That being said, no matter how stellar the technology chosen is, at the end of the day, it is inanimate because what actually breathes life into it are people and process. Whether you are in the market to buy a new content management system or a brand new CRM solution, as much as it is critical, selecting the right software is only part of the equation. From finding the right implementation partner to employing the right employees with the right skillsets, there are numerous moving parts that contribute to the ultimate success of your deployment. Read more >
Whitepapers
Assessing and Selecting Digital Partners: A Framework
By Scott Liewehr
Organizations typically invest a great deal of time and effort selecting the right technology but very little selecting the right partner for implementation. In our experience, this is a huge mistake. Based on the early trends emerging from our recent research on the subject, it is one of the core reasons why so many end up dissatisfied with their implementation.
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