Volume Consultants vs. Quality Consultants

I came across a great post today that relates nicely to the way clients base their decisions on who to hire for a piece of work.

As context, often Work Industries competes with larger web consultants. Those larger consultants often have large portfolios of work and big, brand-name clients. They have in-house teams dedicated to specific compentencies: design, development, content, information architecture, public relations, marketing. Some of them (the consultancies and their teams) do great work and some of them do mediocre work. Overall the quality of output you get as a client depends on who you work with within the consultancy. The people make the difference.

But clients only rarely get to check out the people they’ll be working with in the sales process. Instead, they get the sales team, variously called ‘client management,’ ‘engagement services’ or some other obscured word for sales. Their job is to sell consulting services. If you’re in doubt about whether you’re in touch with a sales person, ask them how their compensation package works. What are the incentives?

So Work Industries often has to communicate to clients and prospective clients why they should choose us, which is really me, James Sherrett, a generalist who has been involved in all the stages of web projects but isn’t an expert on any of them, instead of someone larger, with built-in specialties. I usually tell them that by engaging me and the Work Industries team they are tapping into a flexible, scalable network of experts; people I’ve worked with before who I can draw on and into the team for specific pieces of work and periods of time. This tends to work better as an example. So here goes…

Work Industries recently submitted an Expression of Interest (EOI) to the North Shore Chamber of Commerce to build the North Vancouver Tourism website. In the EOI I put together a crack project team, incorporating the right mix of skills - design, development, marketing, project management - and experience in the local tourism industry - building and managing websites like Vancouver.com and Whistler-Blackcomb.com. A larger consultant would have difficulty proposing the same team because they are beholded to proposing their own team. Work Industries custom-tailors project teams to projects. When a client engages Work Industries they are able to tap into a larger network of skilled, experienced experts that can flex and be adjusted to fit their project.

At least, that’s how I describe it. Jürgen Ahting, who writes for the blog E-Valuation of Information Systems describes it the following way in his post Volume Consultancies vs. Quality Consultants:

Another case where there are significantly different business models is with consulting services.

• A Volume Consultancy has a lot of employees to pay. Hence it would rather like to increase the scope of a consulting gig and thus volume per month than decrease it. Muddying the waters by unearthing more problems than solved is a time proven method here. Additionally the larger the number of employees the more difficult it is to keep the average quality above the market average.
• A Quality Consultant is either alone or has a few partners. She either can not or has not interest in increasing her capacity. Hence she simply does not want more work but follow-on assignments and higher quality work. She is comparable to an employee who doesn’t want more work but further employment and possibly a promotion.

Obviously business model of the Volume Consultancy depends more on the quantity of work. While the Quality Consultant can only live on the quality of her work. A manager who asks “Why should I hire one consultant to select and supervise another consultant?” has certainly not yet realized this crucial difference in the business model of different consultancies. But it certainly makes no sense to hire one Volume Consultancy to select another one.

So now I have another way of describing what we do. In Ahting’s binary, Work Industries is a Quality Consultant. We work with a focused group of clients delivering excellent value and building long-term successes. I wonder, is there a seal of approval? Inside you’ll find one (1) Quality Consultant.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Services • Web Strategy • Work
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Web Strategy for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses

Shane Schick writes in the Globe and Mail today that Small businesses need online savvy for success.

I read the article and liked it. Profiled is a product I’ve been keeping an eye of for a few months now, Shopify, a simple way for anyone to set up an e-commerce storefront, display a product catalogue and take credit card payments. That’s a great product niche and in the private beta I’ve been monkeying around with Shopify seems to be delivering on its simple, easy e-commerce promise.

But what really interested me in the article comes a little later.

The problem for smaller businesses that will become apparent in the coming months is that while services such as Shopify and Clic.net might be able to make e-commerce easier, they won’t necessarily make business itself easier. As it becomes relatively inexpensive to quickly set up a payment gateway and hosted website, they could see a lot more small businesses on-line, all pitching similar products and services. This is the Internet’s Catch-22: While it means small businesses can potentially reach the same vast audience as their larger counterparts, it becomes harder and harder to stand out.

Hallelulah! Someone else preaching from the same hymn book I am. Tools are tools are tools, regardless if they’re online tools - e-commerce websites, performance-based marketing or frictionless invoicing - or tools in the physical world - hammers, trucks, calculators. Tools do not make a strategy, or a business plan, or a recipe for success. Sure tools can make new things possible, but unto themselves they create nothing. They’re no replacement for a strategic plan that understands the tools and incorporates them into a holistic view of an organization.

That’s why I have focused Work Industries on web strategy for small and medium-sized businesses. Having a website is not enough.

Why do you have a website?

In two or three sentences you need to be able to articulate why you have a website, what the website does for your business and how you know if that website is working. Can you do that?

If not, Work Industries can help. We do that.

Contact me, James Sherrett, and we’ll start to make the web work for you.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Services • Web Strategy
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How the Influencer 50 doesn’t teach you to fish

Over at the Marqui blog Tara reports back on an Influencer 50 report Marqui commissioned to tell them what groups exerted the most influence over the buying decision of their target market. The results:

• Industry Analysts: 22%
• Journalists: 18%
• Vendors: 18%
• Online/Blogs: 16%
• Individuals: 10%
• Consultants: 6%
• Forums: 4%

Good news for those of us out here peddling blogs and web strategy consulting. Hey, the web matters to people and influences their decisions!

But that’s no surprise, is it? One of the ongoing shifts of communication over the past decade has been the growing influence of the web in purchase decisions and perception of products. This is no secret. It’s now common that customers entering a showroom or store to browse know as much about the products they’re considered as the sales people.

So it’s encouraging to see that companies are starting to recognize the profound effect the web has on their business. Unfortunately, I don’t think that the Influencer 50 is a great way to tap into the collective and collected information on the web about your product / service and company. Inherently it’s very limited - a standardized methodology with standardized outputs - that reminds me of old-school market research, not new information synthesis and aggregation techniques. And in practice, it seems to deliver a set of recommendations without helping companies and the people running them understand how to keep those recommendations current.

This is one of the oldest lessons out there. Give a man to fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. If I were considering commissioning an Influencer 50 report, I’d want to be part of the report creation, to learn how to do it for myself. Otherwise I’ll be commissioning another report the next time I need to know my key influencers.

One of the things that the new generation of web applications and websites promises (and has begun to deliver) is getting technology out of the way and allowing people to form relationships with other people. The human relationships have stepped to the forefront. That’s why companies can start blogs and create two-way communications with their customers. That’s why individuals can start to have their own voices within the structure of the company. That’s why creativity from customers can drive product innovations.

If the web is about people and relationships, then the darker side to outsourced reporting like the Influencer 50 is that it acts as a validator for companies who choose not to form relationships. It’s a surrogate report in lieu of actual engagement, by proxy and snapshot.

Instead of a one-time report, I’d recommend that companies learn to fish. They might have to hire a fisherman to teach them, but hiring one fisherman to learn from is better than always buying someone else’s fish.

To me, the existence of the Influencer 50 points to a deficit of engagement in technology companies and an engrained avoidance of risk. To have to hire another company to tell you who you have to reach with your marketing sort of forces you to question what you’re doing with a marketing department. Are they just there to produce campaigns and report on a narrow set of metrics? Now those seem like capacities well-suited to outsourcing.

No doubt the Influencer 50 provides a valuable and timely service to some folks. And I don’t mean to pick on them, they’re trying their best to make a go of it, just like the rest of us. I just question the need for the service in the first place. And, in the second place, the long-term viability of any company that doesn’t know its customers and influencers. Outsourcing strategic thinking creates a culture of learned helplessness.

But hold on! Isn’t web strategy a cornerstone of Work Industries’ services? Yes, and we take pride in it. We also take pride in helping companies we work with develop their own web strategy capacities. Their success is our success.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Services • Web Strategy • Web Marketing
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Skype Makes Long-Distances Tolls Obsolete*

*For a limited time, to a limited geography, for people with the free Skype software installed on their computer and audio in and audio out device(s) equiped

Skype announced today that its SkypeOut service is going free for all calls in North America until December 31, 2006. So for the next seven months, until the end of the year, anyone using the Skype VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) software dials for free in Canada and the U.S.

Wow. That’s a big deal. The incumbent monopoly telephone companies must be a little trembly in their booties. The wire-line phone business continues to be a huge cash generator for them and this move feels like another blow to the phone-line business. I predict more folks with cell phones abandoning their land-line in favour of their cells for daily calling and VOIP for long-distance calling.

So what is Skype? It’s a free software application in the style of instant messenger chat program like AOL or MSN Messenger whose primary purpose is voice chats, not text chats. Hook up some kind of audio input and audio output device(s) to your computer, download the software from the Skype website, read their excellent how to get calling tutorial and you’re off the races. If you download the software and want someone to test it out with, my user name is JamesSherrett, so Skype me.

A few weeks ago I bought a Logitech USB headset just to use on Skype and I really like it. I can be working away online and see who among my contacts is available to talk when I need to be in touch with them. It makes for less-frequent emailing with some colleagues, replacing the back and forth of question and answer with a conversation. It’s quicker and more satisfying, and for those of us in the home office, provides a quick connection to the outside world.

So what’s the Skype experience like? Well, the sound quality is not quite as good as wire-line phones. Voices on both ends of the connection have a hollow quality to them. But overall the sound is comparable with cell-phone sound quality. The process of connecting is strong, with the ability to set your status from a few preset options (Available, Not Available, Do Not Disturb, etc.) and the ability to not answer calls. I understand Skype provides a voice mail option as well, but haven’t invested any time in figuring it out.

The benefits for me are that I use a headset so I can be doing other things at the same time, notably typing and mousing at the computer. In addition, Skype also lets you record calls, put calls on hold, provides call duration and allows for conferencing of up to 10 people. If you’re an advanced user, a whole community of add-ons are available from other software developers to extend Skype’s functionality through a developer’s API (Application Programming Interface). Search for a feature you’re interested in and, with over 3 million users online at any given time, you can almost be assured of finding someone else with the same desire. And, better yet, someone who has built something to address it.

I recommend giving Skype a try, even if you’re not interested in replacing your land-line telephone. Voice-over-Internet technology will be engineered into an increasing number of products in coming years, so that soon it will become an expected part of the user experience. The intimacy and connection that voice communication adds to interactions creates a bit of a destabilizing dimension of immediacy and closeness in online interactions. I prefer to deal with and develop tactics for this more-connected world when I want, at my pace, rather than having it happen to me. So trying out Skype made sense. Do you have any experiences with Skype or other VOIP applications?

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Services • Web Strategy • Personal Technologist • News • Personal
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CollectiveX: How to lose customers and frustrate people

Today I came across CollectiveX, a site for managing a group of people on the web. Interesting, I thought to myself. That’s pretty much what I’ve been looking for for a client who wants to manage their board members, various committees and all their associated meetings through a web interface. It sounds good, it sounds perfect.

I went through the CollectiveX tour and was impressed. Slick interface, simple to use and easy enough to get people over the suck stage and into the kicking ass (as Kathy Sierra puts it while talking about creating passionate users).

So I decided to sign up and try the darned thing. When I did, it felled over and I started noticing bad things.

Here are the 3 things I noticed, that I’ve also sent to them via their fancy feedback device in the footer:

1. On the pricing page I had no clue how to sign up. The buttons are practically hidden. No difference is colour or shape from the rest of the design. They’re lost! I wanted to sing up and couldn’t.
2. Go through your copy on the site carefully. On the pricing page the price for the entry-level premium package is $36. On the Create a Group Account page it tells me I’ve selected the $34 package. C’mon, folks. Get it straight! You’re asking for my credit card and you’re telling me two different prices.
3. Um, make the sign up work. It no work for me (Mac, OS 10.4, Safari browser). I hit submit and get a cryptic error that looks like a custom 500 and tells me to go back and try again. It’s great that you’re sending an email to the development team, but if you’re out doing awareness work (as you must have been to come to my attention), then make the thing work.

So CollectiveX, you folks have a product I want to try but can’t get working. I’m ready to be a good client of yours. I’m trying. Please help yourselves. You’ll also be helping me.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Services • Web Marketing • Web Communities • Work • Clients
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Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

I came across a strong post today from the E-Valuation of Information Systems blog about the vital difference between effectiveness and efficiency. Especially helpful to me were the compare / contrast columns of words associated with effectiveness and efficiency. I love lists like this and I use them as shorthand for recognizing the modes people operate in.

So when you’re talking about your business, do you talk about what you do or how you do it? What sets you apart from your competitors?

It seems to me the right answer is not one (effectiveness) or the other (efficiency), but rather applying the right mode of thinking to the right situation. The right approach needed in a certain context. Big shifts and big assignments require a more strategic approach focused on effectiveness, while smaller, incremental shifts require a more tactical approach focused on efficiency.

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Work
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Harebrained Idea #2: Make Words from your Phone Number

Recently I went through the rigamarole of buying a cell phone for the first time. Yes, there was pain. But now I like my handy little connected toy.

In the sales process I had the opportunity to choose my phone number. The sales rep turned the screen on her terminal to show me the search function for the system and we scrolled through numbers looking for one that we thought would be easy to remember. We settled on the one I now have listed on my contact page: 604-788-1502. I like the phonetics and dialing pattern of it best. Then I thought a little more about it.

What if I could have seen some words that my phone number might have created. By using the letters on the keypad - a practice becoming more common all the time with increased usage of text messaging - almost every number spells something. A friend who I fish with used to have FISH as the last 4 digits of his phone number, which made it fantastically easy to remember anytime I needed to call him.

So how about buiding a software application that takes your phone number (or potential phone number, in my case when I was in the store choosing) and translates the numbers to letters, then runs those letters through a matching dictionary to produce a list of real-word results. In an ideal world those results would also be ranked for relevance, or popularity of the words or word combinations. Then when someone asks your number you have an expression to pass on instead of a semi-random string of numbers. (Semi-random because the area code and first three digits (NPA-NXX) are traditionally set by geography.)

So, any coders out there want to give it a shot? Or, tell me why I’m loony.

Dah! Someone’s already invented it: PhoneSpell!

Posted by James Sherrett | Email to a Friend

Filed under: • Harebrained Ideas
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