MARKETING SERVICES
A WELCOME CHANGE: SMOOTHLY SWAPPING YOUR MARKETING PARTNER
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Patrick Headley, CEO, Go Inspire Group, draws on his experience of transition management to offer key pointers on de-risking the process, and critical questions to ask both existing and new suppliers.
Te notion of outsourcing recognises that your company lacks expertise in some areas which are not part of your core business. Outsource partners are engaged because they are experts in an important area of business operations, though they are increasingly acting as strategic partners for the companies they serve. In fact, more than 68 per cent of businesses actively use outsourcing to improve their process efficiency, reduce costs and increase profitability.
However, failing to change from an under- performing partner could do serious damage to your corporation’s competitive position. In the world of marketing, for instance, organisations periodically change their outsourcing provider – to seek greater operating efficiencies or more innovative and imaginative input, for example. Tis is particularly true of companies that host and run marketing operations systems – analytics, customer value profiling, loyalty programmes and so on.
Tat being said, there is also a cost to a poorly managed change. If the transition from one partner to another is to be smooth and trouble-free, then your organisation needs to follow a rigorous protocol to avoid risk. Failing to manage the risk of transition effectively could seriously jeopardise performance, so we’ve highlighted a few tips and tricks to de-risking the transition process below.
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STEP 1: ASSESS THE RISK OF CHANGE Whether in the consideration phase or in the determined-to-change stage, engage early with potential new partners to find out how they would manage the transition and mitigate risk. For instance, it is worth checking if they have good references for a careful, methodical, test-learn- deploy approach which pilots the handover before rolling it out. It may also prove useful to connect the potential outsourcing partner with your IT colleagues for them to assess their knowledge and methods. Finally, you may wish to ask if they are willing to share the risk of transition within the payment agreement.
STEP 2: UNDERSTAND THE CURRENT PROVIDER’S OPERATIONS Reasonable demands for transparency can be made as a form of “due diligence” with the existing supplier. It is reasonable to ask for a clear exposition of how intellectual property is shared and protected in your engagement – this should help understand how much of the data, profiles, analyses, insights, performance figures and deployment methods actually belong to you. You’ll want to understand how you could extract your own IP from their systems if the relationship were to end.
Resistance to these enquiries should raise suspicions as any confident partner will be willing to demonstrate transparency around how they operate and support your business without
homeofdirectcommerce.com | Direct Commerce
BY PATRICK HEADLEY, CEO, GO INSPIRE GROUP
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