As marketers and decision makers, we need to find ways to be more efficient. We need to tap into the resources we have within our organizations and find ways to produce results with less…fill in the blank (resources, time, money, people). One of my favorite things to do is produce something really cool without a lot of resources.
That leads me to tonight’s post on outsourcing. We’ve all witnessed recently as many of our friends and family have been let go from their employer. This has hit home for me, because I have some very close friends and family who have been impacted by down-sizing. I’ve also had to take part in this process as well on my own team, it was one of the hardest things I’ve experienced. I’ve had to fire plenty of people in the past for performance reasons, but it’s so difficult when the only reason is budget…
It is what it is, but that leaves many people left in the wake who still need to get the job done. In some cases, people have been asked to pickup the roles of 2 or 3 other people. It’s not the same environment after that…
As those left in the wake, or trying to restructure… How can we do more with less? In the past six months, I’ve been working with a consulting group Couch & Associates who ha
s tackled a few key projects. In addition, they’ve helped streamline a few other issues as well. We originally contracted with them last summer to help with an integration project. Our success on that project has lead to additional opportunities between both of our groups. I had the privilege of working with one of their main consultants, Sandeep Singh (aka. Eloqua Ninja) last week at our offices for an onsite training and troubleshooting session.
In our session, I was able to see first hand the benefits of having an expert to handle specific problems and issues with our platform. We were able to quickly handle projects that I would otherwise not be able to complete, or would take me days or weeks to figure out.
Here’s the highlights of last Thursday:
- Eloqua Program Builder Training – discussion and application in our install
- Best practice consulting on Eloqua forms, microsites – uncovered inefficiencies in our current setup
- Built an A/B testing program that will automatically pre-deploy an A/B test on a campaign before we send our main batch.
- Developed integration between our lead gen / offer database and Eloqua.
- Discussed ways in which we can integrate our frontend landing pages and form submissions using Eloqua microsites.
In addition to all of this, we were still able to get up to Sundance and grab a bite to eat for lunch at the Foundry Grill… 🙂 You think I’d pass on lunch?
In some cases it makes sense to fill your team with experts in specific niches. We need to find ways to do more with less, consulting is a great solution to tight budgets when used appropriately. When we originally signed Couch, I had gotten a quote from another vendor that priced the project at 40 hours and $10,000 (I’m not going to name anyone…:). We ended up signing a retainer block with Couch for 10 hours, but felt it would take much less time. Once we dug into the project, Couch found a way for us to complete the project in less than 4 hours and they did most of the work. The ROI on that? Priceless…
In cases like this where you have an experienced user / marketer, you can really enjoy greater efficiency and productivity with some occasional consulting hours with the help of an expert.
In the next few days, I’ll post the results and steps to setting up that A/B split testing program. It’s pretty slick and easy to use.
CP
