Archive for the 'Business' Category
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the SOW
In order to deliver what you promise, you have to understand what you’re promising. The fundamental piece of this puzzle is a statement of work. Any good statement of work should protect the interests of both the service provider and the client. Key components of the SOW include:
- Stakeholders (Client and Provider personnel involved in the project)
- A name and description of the project
- Listing of tasks and milestones (if the project is lengthy or requires client approval before proceeding)
- Listing of deliverables and any caveats to the use of those deliverables (more on this later)
- Project start date and estimated duration (including duration of effort by hours)
- Estimated fees
- Project assumptions (the catch-all, more on this in a bit as well)
- Execution statements and signatures
So, at this point, you’re saying to yourself, “Self, I’ve had Business Law 101, I know you need a contract and those things just make sense.” And you would be right, its pretty basic stuff that SHOULD be common sense. But common sense is like that lazy guy in the next cube who golfs with the boss and seems to be on vacation every other week.
Say you write an iron-clad SOW that follows the text book example to a tee. What’s the worst that can happen? Allow me to share a few of my own experiences. The three biggest pitfalls lie in the middle of the SOW: tasks and milestones, deliverables and caveats, and estimated duration. The biggest takeaway for this article is to really think through things when you write an SOW. Certainly, the statement of work will be derived largely from the proposal and negotiating process. But even once frameworks and milestones are agreed upon, there’s still quite a large margin for error. It’s important to keep these things in mind that I’ve learned over the course of my career.
1. Don’t include a task/deliverable that you aren’t completely sure you can carry out in the time allotted for the project.
2. Don’t include tasks/deliverables that go above and beyond what’s required to fulfill the terms of the contract. There’s plenty of chance to go above and beyond anyway if time and resources allow, but the contract should not stipulate this.
3. Tasks/deliverables included in the SOW should be clear and specific. You don’t want to leave any room for interpretation of what a task truly means. This can lead to significant financial impact in project delays, additional resource requirements, or worst-case, litigation.
4. Stipulations should be included as to how the client can use your deliverables, reports, findings, and intellectual property once the project is complete. This includes sharing with third parties, use of findings for strategic and tactical planning, etc.
At this point, I need to say that I’m not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, and any such guidance should be obtained from a lawyer when developing a generic statement of work for future use. Now that that’s out of the way, just a few personal stories on how these things can impact the people actually doing the work.
I’ve found myself on numerous occasions doing work that wasn’t part of the original scope because of vague statements about deliverables or tasks to be completed. In managing the daily activities of the project, I often find myself referring to the SOW to make sure we’re doing everything we said we would. Nothing is better than getting to a line item and saying to yourself “What the hell does this mean?” Because you know the client has a very specific idea of what it means, and of course, the client is always right.
I’ve also experienced cases where the someone wanted to get flowery with the description of a deliverable. If you can promise a report that shows site traffic over the past 6 months, you don’t need to promise a novel that shows the traffic, slices and dices the data 10 different ways, contains pretty pictures, and contains an instant weight loss remedy. If time allows, you can certainly deliver the novel, but then its seen as value-added, and not expected.
In the end, the SOW can determine the success or failure of a project before it even starts. It’s important to set yourself up on the right foot. The nature of projects is that there’s plenty of things that can happen out of your control, make sure you do everything that IS in your control right.
Have you experienced a situation where unclear statements of work caused project headaches or worse? Have you experienced a situation where a provider promised one thing and you were expecting something else? Let’s hear from you.
In my previous articles, I took some more fundamental IT theory and applied it (for better or worse) to SEO. As part of an occasional series, I’m going to pull it up out of the weeds a little bit and focus more on project sales and delivery from my own experience and perspective. My hope is that my own recollections can spur some conversation from readers about their good and bad experiences and that we can all learn a little bit in the process. So without further ado, I give you Part 1:
Know Thyself
Clients are generally smart people. This is something that many professionals in service delivery choose to ignore. In any given proposal process, you may have 10 people on a selection committee, and you may successfully BS 8 of them. But there’s always going to be 1 or 2 naturally cynical people, who through that cynicism fulfill the blind squirrel-nut theory. Keep in mind that during this process, you’ll be standing in a room explaining to this group why your product is the best for them, why the organization can’t get your skills anywhere else, and why they should pay a premium for an outsider to come in rather than do the work in-house.
Based on past experience, “The 8″ (as I’ll henceforth call them) are probably mid-to-upper/executive management from all business process areas. Strategic thinkers interested in the long-term and the financial in nature. “The 2″ are probably direct reports or low-to-mid management. They will be impacted most immediately and on a larger scale than “The 8″. They’re tactical thinkers, interested in day-to-day operations. How do you reach both groups, sell your services, foster partnership, and, hopefully, reap benefits for both parties?
The Value Proposition
Developing a value proposition is one of the most important and time consuming activities a service provider can do. Significant thought needs to go into first deciding what it is that you’ll do, then deciding how you’ll do it. And all the while, you need to be able to articulate how what you offer and how you offer it will provide benefit to the client in a way that separates you from your competition. For established providers, the value prop is easier to articulate and has probably evolved over time. For a startup, it can be daunting.
And so it comes back to the old adage, “Know Thyself”. It can be tempting as a startup to say “We need clients, so we’ll do whatever they want us to do and hopefully something will stick.” But that can lead to an identity crisis for the organization and can distract it from doing what it’s good at or what the original intent was. So how can you develop a value proposition that you can stand behind and can win work.
- What the organization does?
This should be a straightforward, simple sentence (think nouns and verbs with as few ad-words as possible). “ElectronSEO enables clients to better reach and retain customers by…”
- How the organization does what they do?
This should contain the services you provide at a high level. Things like copywriting, linking strategies, reciprocal agreements, website design, etc.
- What are the benefits to the organization?
At this point, you may be tempted to put in some bulletpoints you found on the net about potential gains a client can achieve. But this should be at a higher level. You don’t want to start promising specifics that will never be met. Statements suitable for this can be “Measurable increase in website traffic” or “Enhanced search engine results”. It may seem like a cop out, but it can save you from legal issues down the road.
With a well-developed value proposition, you can be better equipped to respond to RFP’s or to cold-sell your services to an organization. Research will aid you in tailoring the value prop to the specific needs of the organization so that both “The 8″ and “The 2″ will be in your camp.
What are your experiences? Have you been involved in a selection process and one of your potential partners couldn’t tell what they did to save their life? Have you developed a value proposition that worked on the first try or took multiple iterations to get right? Let’s hear your thoughts.
SEO is a great engine for getting results if you know what you are doing. But what fuels that engine? What is it that drives the great mechanical beast that is Search Engine Optimization? The answer is simple: Content. I ran across a great series of articles by Brian Clark over at Copyblogger about what has been successful for him in his SEO endeavors. Hit the jump and check it out. More than that–his articles are the inspiration for this post.
SEO Copywriting like I said previously, is far from an exact science. There is, however, one aspect in which you have total control: The SEO content. Gone are the days of B.S. content, shameless (and pointless) keywording for the almighty click. One of the overarching themes that we see with Clark’s article is the necessity of not just SEO content, but solid, relevant SEO content. Clark uses the term, “Cornerstone,” which I enjoy. Cornerstone content, according to Clark is,
“A cornerstone is something that is basic, essential, indispensable, and the chief foundation upon which something is constructed or developed. It’s what people need to know to make use of your website and do business with you.”
Phenomenal definition, and kudos to Clark on this. What we see here are the underpinnings of great writing in general–just with an SEO twist. What I am going to focus on is the “essential, indispensable” aspects of his definition.
So, we want content that is Essential and Indispensable. This breaks from the origins of SEO content and copywriting because what we saw back then there smatterings of keywords, random linking, keywords with nothing to do with the topic of the page. Now, we need essential. We need indispensable. Great. What do those mean?
Essential and indispensable; we, as copywriters want our SEO content to be essential and indispensable. Actually, when you think about it, we want all our content to be essential and indispensable. So, take a random keyphrase, Tapioca Pudding Wars. If we were writing SEO content about Tapioca Pudding Wars (TPWs), we would want every person who was interested in TPWs to not only want to look at us, but need to look at us because we are relevant and indispensable.
Because we are relevant, our page fills a need for the searcher. We offer something about TPWs that no one else does. What we say is important. Important enough that Bob doing research for his blog about the TPWs finds our information so profound, that he links back to us. Now, not only does Bob know that we are a great source of information about TPWs, but everyone who reads Bob’s Blog will, in theory, also find our information essential and indispensable. Then, one of Bob’s friends, Bertha finds our page about TPWs through Bob, thinks our content is great as well and also links back to us. So on and so on and so on.
One of the points that Clark makes is that shoddy content isn’t going to do it anymore because search engine crawlers take into account social medias; how many people link to your page, how many views you get a day; have you been Dugg?; etc. The advent of web 2.0 completely changed the game with SEO content writing, in a good way. Now, those people who are expert B.Sers but aren’t don’t actually fill a need are out of the picture, because they won’t get the consumer push because there is no reason for a searcher to go to their site because the B.S. in fact, does nothing. In order to be successful at SEO content and copywriting, you must prove yourself to be reputable, essential, and indispensable. Without that, you will fall off the radar because you didn’t provide a service or fill a need.
You want people to forget that they have a back button on their browser when they hit your site. Solid SEO content does just that because on a base level, it delivers what it promises. It’s not fluff, it’s not pointless, and it wasn’t just a trick to get you to the website. It’s actually pertinent to what the searcher wants.
It seems like this should be pretty self-evident, but even today we find that actually locating something pertinent on the web can be challenging amongst all the drivel. So while it presents itself as common-sense–the evidence is to the contrary. It’s refreshing to know that to those who are willing to put the effort into their sites, and tweak a little bit for keyphrases, they could see themselves on that almighty first results page.
Great SEO content is like the fuel for the engine of your SEO campaign–it doesn’t look like it does much on the surface but without it, you can’t go anywhere.
Till we meet again…
/end Transmission
IT has undergone a shift. Some of this shift has been talked about previously. But right now, I’m talking bedrock principles. Basics, building blocks, foundations, DNA…you get the point.
There’s a little transitive property thing going on. For those like me who are not always strong on basic algebra knowledge:
The transitive property states that if A=B=C then A=C. Follow me as I make a few leaps with this:
1. Search Engine Optimization is the effective and efficient design of an organization’s website in order to garner attention and traffic.
2. A website is an organization’s statement of its central vision and mission (i.e. strategy).
3. A strategy is an organization’s top-down plan for future success.
Put it all together and what do you get? Any effort for search engine optimization should and must be in line with the vision and strategy of the organization as a whole. If executive management says they want to increase their customer base by X number of customers in Y months/years through internet channels, whoever is developing the optimization plan needs to A. stop panicking and B. have passable (or better) knowledge of how SEO can achieve those goals.
So what should this person do? Here’s a short, non-inclusive list:
1. Talk to an organization’s business process owners to understand the existing environment.
2. Talk to executive management to gain historical perspective on where the organization has been, where it is now, and where management envisions it to be in 5 years.
3. Look at the competitive environment. What is the organization’s competition doing? What do they do better/worse? An extension of this is a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats).
The great thing about this is that although you may move from one organization to another, you take the knowledge about a given product, market, or industry with you. You become a valuable resource that can provide informal benchmarks and deep-seeded expertise. The benefits go both ways.
Sometimes you have to wonder what possesses people to videotape themselves. I’ve presented in front of potential and current clients enough to know that they have certain expectations when you take time out of their busy day to sell them services.
1. They expect you to be well-spoken…Strike 1
2. They expect you to be well-dressed (popped collars work best in 1985 and NOT on suit jackets)…Strike 2
3. Don’t give off vibes similar to that of a used car salesman…Strike 3, better luck next time
The author of the linked article brings up some good points. Where is the line between spam (which internet denizens have learned to tune out) and value-added content that drives traffic. It seems to me that the key differences are commitment to getting a (good) word out and the intent of the word that’s outted.
Key differentiators :
Spammer (either a product/service provider or an agent acting on behalf said provider)
- Employs automated tools to seek out somewhat related content to blindly blanket a target audience
- Probably has no idea what its target audience is (hence the blind spamming)
- Probably has an inferior product or service
Legit Search Engine Optimizer
- First and foremost, they make an effort to understand the client’s product or service and the market they operate in
- Secondly, they work with the client to identify the target audience/customer demographic
- The content that is posted adds value
- The provider understands their product and why its superior to competing products
It’s important to be a solution, not a contributor to the problem. Doing right by clients is one thing, but choosing the right clients to work with means everything in the world.
When you think about it, IT (emphasis on information) has something that most organizations already own, pay outsiders to sell them, and everyone wants - detailed information about the habits of its customers, trends in the industry, and profitable or unprofitable products.
The process for using this information will be different for an organization like Amazon.com, web-only business, constantly customer facing, versus a company that uses its website for informational purposes rather than commerce.
But you don’t have to be a retailer to use the information a website stores to gain valuable insights into your potential or realized customer base.
This podcast from Gartner talks about the importance of leveraging a web presence to gain those insights.
Its pretty hard for a CFO to say no to an IT leader that presents coveted marketing data on a silver platter, for little or no additional cost over the initial investment.
The dog days of 2001-2004 are finally behind us and IT spending is approaching post-Net Bubble, pre-9/11 levels (i.e. the sweet spot). However, the way money’s spent and approval of that spending has changed drastically. Free-wheeling CIOs are practically non-existent.
This slideshow from CIO Insight calls attention to a number of facts facing IT management in today’s business environment. Increasingly, CIOs (or more often, Directors of Information Technology) report not to the chief executive, but to the chief financial officer. The slideshow spells out one obvious aspect of this; the CIO, and by extension the IT organization are not privy to the formation of a company’s longterm vision.
A second, less obvious, but equally important aspect of this change in reporting hierarchy is this: Who’s writing the checks? By making the IT leader a direct report of the CFO, the company is sending a clear message to IT - “What have you done for me lately?” Whether its a request for a new server, the latest Windows OS, or hiring an additional developer, the IT leader must justify the expenditure and prove Return on Investment.
ROI is nothing new in the business world, but in my own personal experience at clients in multiple industries, it IS new for IT. Obviously, ROI for an enterprise resource planning application, a mainframe upgrade or replacement, or developing a new application is complex, with numerous factors to consider. But there’s a couple key points that can be boiled up into this:
1. IT leaders need to play the hand they’re given.
2. IT leaders need to clean up their house in order to prove to the rest of the organization that they’re as vital to the company’s success as the manufacturing, accounting, or service departments.
3. IT needs to prove ROI by leveraging what they have in their possession, which is arguably one of the company’s most important assets. Something so obvious, that its in IT’s very name and yet is often overlooked…
INFORMATION