A successful project starts with a good Project Manager

It’s not unusual to hear of companies that started with a brilliant idea – but faced challenges turning that idea into reality. Whether what was delivered didn’t match expectations, or the project launch was delayed by months or even years, or the cost for implementing the project was much higher than estimated, the result is the same – loss of efficiency, loss of budget and loss of business. A key factor in successful projects is an experienced project manager who provides end-to-end management of the entire project, including the budget Read more…

You can make your teams love guidelines!

All companies need guidelines. Guidelines help teams align behind the company’s vision, strategy, and operational model and are critical to the success of your business. Without clear guidelines, your brand image, strategy, resources, costs, and security are at risk. Guidelines aren’t meant to “annoy” teams; they are established to support a healthy business and all teams should follow them. So why is it that teams tend to not like guidelines and often try to get around them? Teams may believe that their business needs justify not following existing guidelines because Read more…

A data-driven approach drives business – and reduces marketing costs

A “data-driven approach” is not just another buzz word, it’s a solid approach to getting the most out of your marketing investment – and optimizing its impact on your business. Learn these 5 guiding principles of a successful data-driven approach. 1) Understand your customers and their needs If you want to make your customers happy, you need to know them and their needs. The more data you collect about them, the better. But if your customer base is large, having individual profiles may be tough to manage. In that case Read more…

Web centralization vs. localization – where to place the cursor

Most international companies face the same dilemma: should we set up and manage our online presence centrally? Or should we let our local teams take responsibility? The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. It makes a lot of sense to design your end-to-end online user experience centrally, including navigation, information structure, page design, etc. Setting up centrally, then deploying locally certainly drives savings vs. starting from scratch in each country. Another great benefit is ensuring a consistent brand experience across countries. The next logical question then is, what is Read more…

Need to get a project back on track? Take the right steps

So often we’ve heard of projects that are late, yet the project development teams report the status as “green”. Whether it’s because some teams hope that “positive thinking” will somehow magically get the project back on track. Or they’re afraid of project escalation. Or because turning the project status to orange will require that they identify the root causes of the delay and find answers they may not have. Whatever the reason, ignoring the issue is never the right solution. Long-term and innovative projects in particular are bound to face Read more…

Don’t let microsites get out of control

You probably hear many justifications for creating microsites: “I want to have a website that I can fully control.” “If I send my audience to the master company website, they may go somewhere else on the website, and they get away from the product lines I’m in charge of.” “The experience, design, and page templates of the master website don’t meet my needs.” “It’s easier and faster to create a new website than to get content published on the master company website.” “Leads from my area of the master website Read more…

“We need more money and resources” … no, you probably don’t

Sometimes company teams feel that they’re overloaded with project execution, new project set-ups, meetings and administrative tasks. Do they necessarily need bigger budgets and more resources? There are other solutions… Closer collaboration between teams It’s not unusual to see several teams working in parallel on similar projects. It could be due to lack of visibility over projects led by other teams, or because the project developed by one team doesn’t fully meet the needs of the other team, or even because a team wants to keep the pride of launching Read more…