Commitment Counts: Building Partnerships with Digital Production ...

I think the word ?partnership? has become something of a clich? in business. Many companies talk about their critical ?partners,? when really they have arms-length and strictly commercial relationships with their vendors and suppliers. My point is that it?s easy to call someone a partner, but true partnerships take time, effort and commitment to develop fully.

Certainly the top corporate marketers and best creative agencies think in terms of highly symbiotic and mutually beneficial relationships. Brands benefit when agencies are encouraged to openly share good ideas, focus on quality and generally go the extra mile. When it comes to digital production, Deliver has developed highly engaged and long-term relationships with a number of clients and agencies. These partnerships represent the most productive, collaborative and rewarding work we do ? and our clients see more value from them, too. Such partnerships are built on mutual respect, trust and adaptability, as well as realistic expectations and open communication.

In our experience, the most effective partnerships are notable for the following hallmarks, which suggest how to build them and why they?re worth building.

Sharing, listening and learning: Great relationships often begin with listening, ensuring that all stakeholders have a chance to share their ideas and concerns. It is especially important to hear from individuals who have been affected by outsourcing of digital production work. Listening is not just a way to be nice to our client and agency contacts or to let people vent, but rather a very effective means to pick up nuances of the brand culture or clarify what it will take to succeed. Further, we acknowledge their concerns about perceived disruptions, share our sense of the reasons for the changes, and clearly articulate the benefits of working together.

Listening and learning are also good pieces of advice for clients and agencies. We always appreciate the chance to show what we can do ? especially in areas like quality assurance, digital asset management and automation where we believe we add considerable value beyond reduced costs. Such open, up-front and two-way communications provide the basis for productive working relationships moving forward. And they ensure the mutual respect that is necessary for true partnerships.

Willingness to work through rough patches: Every business relationships has ups and downs. Strong partnerships acknowledge this reality and commit to dealing with them collaboratively. There may be technical hiccups in sharing information or differing perspectives on how to address messaging concerns in a specific market or channel. Advanced planning around problem resolution and escalation go a long way to smoothing out conflict when it occurs.

More importantly, all stakeholders ? clients, agencies and digital production teams ? must be willing to openly share information and feedback (including both positive and negative input). The more upfront dialogue, the smoother the initial transition is likely to be. And once work is underway, regular status reports should be shared widely. Client input should be clear and actionable. Potential issues and bottlenecks should be highlighted early, before they become full problems or major crises. Issues shouldn?t be concealed. We have seen time and again how these steps and strategies minimize the risk of problems occurring and then smooth out the rough patches when they inevitably occur.

Availability matters: Giving feedback and sharing information requires that the right people are available and engaged at the right times, whether it?s for initial onboarding sessions, strategic planning or post-project debriefings. When critical decisions must be made or final approvals granted, senior marketing leaders must ensure they can meet what may be very tight timelines ? especially if they?ve set the deadlines themselves! Automated workflow and collaborative tools can be a real help to simplifying and streamlining ongoing communications, especially when there are multiple time zones to be navigated.

Instilling flexibility: Partnerships are also flexible. Neither party simply imposes pre-defined processes onto the situation, without ensuring the working approach is a good fit for the unique situation, target markets or marketing objectives. Yes, best practices and proven methodologies should be brought to the table, but not adopted in ?one size fits all? fashion. Instead, they should be tailored and adopted by project, campaign, brand, channel and so on.

This is also true of setting SLAs; performance incentives should be formalized and meaningful, but not so restrictive as to tie everyone?s hands or too narrowly focus efforts. Remember, the definition of success will likely change over time and informal metrics may sometimes matter as much as hard, quantifiable measures.

Given the tight economy and constant downward pressure on marketing budgets, it would seem that there is little or no time to develop partnerships. But, in reality, partnerships may be the best way for CMOs and agency leaders to meet the new ?do more with less? CMO imperative. In fact, I can make the case that partnerships will only become more important and add more value in the fragmented digital marketing landscape. Having a full ?mind-meld? is almost a requirement for ensuring consistency and quality of brand messaging across a wide range of channels and formats.

Source: http://blog.deliveroffshoring.com/?p=257

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