In 2015 the emphasis for project management is on fast hires, contract engagements and tangible milestone delivery (or agile project methodology). Companies are looking for people to hit the ground running and bring with them the skills and network to complete the job as fast as possible so as to produce result in the shortest amount of time and least amount of spend.

 

There are several factors at play, let’s explore a few of these.

 

There is less time in the 2015 digital world, to deliver. Projects need to be completed as quickly as possible, we need to measure the value of every dollar spent and when time means money, good project managers are planning project delivery so that tangible results can be achieved in the shortest possible time. The agile framework is being applied across the board, seeing companies build fast and “see if it fits”, before moving into the next phase or release of funds.

 

From a marketing point of view, there is a massive shift towards personalisation and this is changing the way we think about the opportunities in the digital space. In terms of technology and development, this contributes to the emphasis on building fast to “see if it fits”, as companies can now spend as little as a few hundred dollars to launch a marketing campaign, for example, and realise (or not) the benefits within days or weeks. This can be achieved by installing out of the box products to work with existing technology/systems and data. More than ever before, companies can leverage off the infrastructure they already have, coupled with advanced tools now available to them, to take advantage of the social networking and marketing space.

 

In 2015, companies are more reluctant to tie up their cash in the big, longer term development projects, when there are many shorter term and far simpler options available, which they can see tangible results. This sees them hire contract project managers with broad skills to analyse, plan, deliver and help them realise benefits quickly and effectively, without the overheads of permanent hires or expensive in-house development. This is where Digital Rehab specialises – providing businesses a solution for project delivery and business improvement.

 

Another factor which we can no longer escape is the cost of completing development on shore. It is no longer economical for many companies to have development work completed in Australia. In fact, many of the larger development houses have closed their doors, which has left a void in the market. This has in turn contributed to the hiring of highly skilled contract project managers with the capability to manage projects end to end, and importantly, who can call up on their network to complete the job and manage remove teams to ensure timely and quality delivery of results.

Let’s review Big Commerce

If you are looking for an inexpensive ecommerce solution for your business, you can’t go wrong with Big Commerce. The Big Commerce solution is a solid and very popular system, which provides a business ready solution straight ‘out of the box’. Set up requires minimal technical knowledge and you can quite literally start selling within a few hours.

 

How do you get started with a Big Commerce website?

Big Commerce provides a hosted ecommerce solution with no contracts; you can initially sign up for a 15 day trial and at the end, you simply select the package you want and pay the monthly fee. The price starts from around $30 per month, depending on your requirements. This fee includes hosting for your website, shopping cart, customer account management, website content management and inventory management as standard inclusions.

 

The system is PCI compliant and scalable. We strongly recommend you purchase an SSL certificate, which is in addition to the monthly cost, but this protects your customer’s credit card information and is a must for any site conducting financial transactions. Big Commerce can supply an SSL certificate for you or you can purchase one separately, either way Big Commerce has a step by step installation guide to help you get your security set up. They really do have it all covered.

 

Additional Apps (plug in applications) are available from a Big Commerce library, providing you access to ready made and tested options to enhance your customers experience in your store or to add value to your business by way of optimised SEO or marketing applications, such as email campaign management.

 

There is a vast array of design options, known as Themes, and each theme allows for additional personalisation to suit your brand. Important to note also, is that many of the themes are designed so that they respond well on mobile devices, tablets and desktops. All of this is at your fingertips and can be achieved with a good eye for detail and just a little technical knowledge. Besides the SSL certificate, our second recommendation is too ensure you chose a theme that looks great on mobile, the stats show that more and more users every day are shopping from their phones.

 

In the past, one of the most cost prohibitive functions for start-up online store was the connection of a secure payment gateway from your website through to your bank. With the exception of PayPal, configuring your site to accept credit card payments required a skilled developer and therefore more expense. Additionally, the process in setting up a merchant bank account was very time consuming. Thankfully Big Commerce offer a payment system called Stipe (www.stripe.com) which can be configured to direct your online payments direct to your personal bank account (if you wish), from within the admin dashboard, once your Stripe account is has been created.

 

Regarding domain names, you can bring your own domain name and configure this within the admin panel, or you can set up with a Big Commerce subdomain and get selling even sooner…

 

Happy selling!

It’s more important than ever before to make the most of every lead and potential opportunity in your business. Every interaction your business has with a customer goes towards building a profile.

Tracking and recording each and every sales and customer service transaction as well as recording some behaviour of visitors to your website, helps to profile a customer for marketing purposes which can lead to more successful repeat sales and/or cross selling.

We now live in world where you can tailor your marketing campaigns in such a way that you target your exact market with campaigns which appeal directly to them. Not only that, you can begin to track your marketing RIO to the $ for each and every individual on your customer list. And it gets even better, you can have this, without expensive infrastructure or an IT and Marketing degree.

Welcome to the marriage of SalesFore and Pardot.

SalesForce is a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool and which manages the relationships you have with your customers or potential customers.

SalesForce stores and manages your customers information and tracks any sales or other activity against their profile. Your website forms for example, may feed customer information into your SalesForce system and/or your outbound call centre may key customer information and activity directly into the system.

Depending on your type of business and the types of activity you conduct, this can all be actioned and recorded in SalesForce, forming a ‘profile’ for each customer. Typically a Lead is the entry point of potential customers into the SalesForce CRM system. Leads are then “Qualified” to determine if they match a certain set of criteria. Once qualified, for example, they live in Australia and have potential need for your business services; they can be converted into an Account. Your business can then generate and manage Opportunities from this account whereby they may be sold particular products and services and/or can be flagged to be managed by a certain staff member. The other powerful component SalesForce offers is the reporting it can generate for your business. You get to decide your goals and measurements and have customised reporting built in.

This may be tracking your sales teams activity, the amount of new leads from a particular website form or campaign or the dollar figure of a particular product your customers have purchased for example.

Now lets look at how Pardot can play a role to enhance this further for you.

Pardot provides tools and reporting which allows you to create deeper and more detailed profiles of your customers and includes powerful marketing campaign building tools and reporting.

Pardot allows business to nurture and generate leads from the beginning, so rather than a standard “one size fits all” campaign landing page on your website, funnelling every lead into the same bucket, you can customise your landing pages to qualify and direct customers down different channels, depending on their preferences.

This type of functionality doesn’t require much IT knowledge, as Pardot provides tools and templates to guide you through. Forms can be built with simple drag and drop functionality. Most importantly though, you can set scores for particular inputs and conversions, and use progressive profiling to gather data on your customers over the course of their visit to your website landing page and forms. So using the example above, we can track and score a potential customer who lives in Australia AND lives in NSW differently to how we track and score someone in Victoria.

This is achieved by using Pardot’s automation rules builder which allows you to segment potential customers and send targeted emails, or assign leads to relevant team members based on the actions or inputs, in this simplified example case, the customers residential state. Pardot includes easy to use email campaign builders and can manage the sending of emails, there is no need to export your marketing lists to a 3rd party product.

You can create and target your email content based on the user profile gathered from your landing pages and forms. Pardot can also track and record email open rates and clicks through statistics, if you set up the rules to do so. Combining Pardot and SalesForce gives you a very clear window to view all of your prospect and marketing activity from within your CRM.

Leads and contacts can be synced between the systems and all opportunity and marketing campaign information can be pulled in to the CRM for singular location report generation.

Pardot de-duplicates records so there is never a worry of double records or becoming out of sync. A single sign on is all that is required for users of the combined systems.

A marriage made in sales and marketing heaven, wouldn’t you say?

What is a CMS?

A CMS is a Content Management System. The term is used for the management system behind any type of website content.

How you choose a CMS is really based on your requirements and how you want to work with it. Your level of technological knowhow and budget may also play a part.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started

It’s best to start with a list of what you need, or what you think you might need in future. A bullet pointed list is better than nothing at all. The list will help you focus on your requirements and is great base line to refer back to if you become overwhelmed with all the choices. Its easy to get caught up in the ‘bells and whistles’ and this list may save you money and time in the future.

Another great angle to take when listing your requirements and needs, is to try and map out the “process of your business” or the “user journey” a visitor to your site might take. A process map or an ordered list of steps will help you see if there are any gaps in requirements. This is especially important if you have an online store as there are many ‘backend’ functions that may need to be considered in your CMS selection process.

The process map will help to determine the need for security and the amount of storage you may require for example. It also help to flag any requirements or functions that could possibly be added later or handled manually if that suits your needs.

OK, so what solutions are available?

There are many “subscription (or pay by the month) solutions” available on cloud based technology, these provide a one stop shop with regards to content management function, hosting, storage, security and maintenance all wrapped into one. Once you have configured your CMS website and get up and running, you won’t need to worry about maintenance or updates as the solution provider will manage this on your behalf.

All you really need to do is follow instructions to set up and then pay your monthly bill on time. The subscription CMS solutions are very simple to manage and are designed so that non-technical people can configure their website and continue to administer their site on their own. The providers often include training videos and online support to help you with set up and any questions. Community support and blogs are a really large component of the success of these solutions and a great way for website owners to find information.

Another option is the “out of the box solution” whereby you can download the website code and have it configured in your own hosting environment. This process will typically need to be completed by a developer, but it is designed to be simple (if you know what you are doing). You will also need to manage the hosting and maintenance yourself going forward. Downloading the source code is generally free, it’s only the hosting and related items that you will need to pay for on and ongoing basis. The out of the box solution is an inexpensive way to get set up with a CMS and still maintain control over your costs and website. Plugins for additional applications and updates are readily available, but you will need to install these yourself. This type of solution is referred to as Open Source which means customisation is possible and inexpensive. This option gives you access to your own database and control of your design.

Community support and blogs are also available for this type of solution.

The other type(s) of solutions are aimed more at enterprise level or where high security and tight change control may be required. There are wide and varied types of CMS for this level, including bespoke or customised versions through to fully licensed solutions. These types of CMS are often configured to be hosted on servers within a business’ own network or are on 3rd party servers where service levels and security are at optimum levels.

The benefits and reasons for enterprise type CMS is they (often) have tools for integrating content with other business systems. They allow for strict change management and/or very tight security measures are able to be easily managed by your own developers. Costly software licensing is often a factor for these CMS solutions.

So, in summary:

Subscription (or pay by the month) Website CMS = Quick to set up, cost effective, technical knowhow NOT required, set and forget, free support, minimal customisation allowed/included.

Out of the box Website CMS = Quick to set up, cost effective, some technical knowhow required, set and maintain, free support, customisation options available, integration options available.

Enterprise Website CMS = Slower to set up, costs involved, technical knowhow a must, set and maintain, often more costly support, full customisation options, robust, integration ready, at your control.

Having your finger on the pulse and knowing what’s new and exciting in the world of digital is an invaluable asset. So how can you become the go-to person for knowing what’s going on in the world of digital? The answer is reading, and lots of it.

Below are a few suggestions for my favourite sites, blogs and insights. I commend any digital project manager to review my list below as I find it helpful in enabling me to be a better digital project manager.

Social Media Recommended Reference sites

• Social Media Today
• SocialTimes
• Mashable

SEO Reference sites

• Search Engine Marketing
• Search Engine Watch
• Search Engine Land

Information Architecture / UX Insights and Emerging Trends

• UXmatters
• UX Magazine
• UX Booth

Design

• Co.Design
• Smashing Magazine
• .net magazine
• AGDA

Technology

• Techmeme
• TechCrunch
• ReadWriteWeb
• Geeky Gadgets
• GeekWire
• ThinkGeek
• Wired.com
• Engadget
• ZDNet

Ad Industry

• Digital Buzz Blog
• Campaign
• Adweek
• B&T
• AdNews
• Mumbrella

Inspiration & Innovation

• FastCompany.com
• Smart Company
• Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation
• TED: Ideas worth spreading
• Kickstarter

To be a Digital Leader

You need to stay ahead of clients & competitors and proactively anticipate where market will be in years to come. In order to do this, you need to stay informed.

Digital Leadership is a critical success ingredient missing, in most organisations. Too often, “I’m so busy” is the excuse for not making time to do things that really matter.

My Advice – take the time to engage with your own set of reference sites that keep your skills up with the pace of the dynamic market we operate in

It has become common practice for companies to engage external agencies and/or outsource all aspects of digital project work. Many clients who come to Digital Rehab are unsure of their technology options, how to get what they need or even where to start when it comes to digital projects.

As a result, there has been an increased demand for Project Managers (PMs) who can run the project on the client’s behalf and essentially become the ‘conduit’ between the client and the potential developers/designers. The PM plays a critical role in the success of digital project delivery and dependent on requirements, can work on the client side or development side to deliver best results.

So, when and who do you engage for this critical role?

It is important that you choose your PM and involve them in discussions as early as you can.

Before any technical decisions are made, include your PM so they can start planning the foundation for a successful digital delivery. This approach will give you an opportunity to determine if the PM is right for the job well before any commitment to development costs, for example. Also, it’s an expensive process from a cost and time point of view, to replace a PM mid project, so take the time to engage the PM early on.

The next step you (or your PM) need to take is to involve technically minded people in further planning discussions to ensure your digital project is viable and to begin discussions on the options and appropriate techniques for delivery of your requirements. The client, or more importantly, decision makers, should be involved in these initial discussions as well.

Digital Rehab consultants are strides ahead of the game when it comes to project initiation and planning. Engaging one of our consultants not only gives you a fountain of project management knowledge, but opens the channels to a network of experienced and trustworthy development and design resources.

You can save valuable time and money by having the correct people “in the room” at the very beginning – this is an important step to help save your project from potential cancellation before even seeing the light of day. The role of the PM in the initial stages of the project is a crucial one, so if the correct one is engaged upfront; your project has a much stronger chance of success.

Digital Rehab consultants are seasoned digital project managers who know the questions to ask and how to get the best out of project initiation meetings. Our business model is to ‘partner’ with our clients and this approach ensures projects are well scoped and executed through to delivery and beyond.

A standout offering that Digital Rehab brings to the table is our ability to analyse, scope and cost your project and then with your approval, execute and deliver a fully tested digital solution on time and budget.

We are end-to-end digital project managers. We have the experience and know how when it comes to business analysis, coupled with our proven track record of digital delivery, which makes one of our consultants invaluable to have “in the room”.

We’ve all been there… The client wants a major change after they see the UAT site or worse the business case is changing at a rate of knots and you have to find a way to cater for it, NOW.

The best way to deal with change is to expect it.

Of course you can always throw more money or time at a project, and if the client is willing and able to do this that’s great, but this will do little for your credibility as a PM.

The agile approach seems to fit well with larger projects with more time and budget, where the approach is to build then check, then repeat. This very concept has ‘built-in change management’. However, smaller projects are generally are more suited to the traditional ‘waterfall’ method, where you only have one chance to get it right.

So what do you do when changes are thrown at you? First, breath.

Whichever methodology or approach you take to project management, be clear on the process for managing change from the beginning. Be aware that change is change, it’s different to issues or fixes for work which is off specification; and although we generally cater for a bit of change in the contingency budget, it actually requires a whole new or separate budget and often a new or separate timeframe if you want to have a truly successful project.

Set yourself up to succeed and be transparent with your client that changes will be needed. I’m not aware of a digital project that has not ‘changed’ at some point, so be bold and ask upfront if there is a budget for Change. If nothing else, this question will surely spark some kind of response and give you an indication of how too successfully manage or escalate the change requests that will inevitably come in.

The other thing to be aware of is the ‘sale’ of a digital project which is negotiated without any technical advice or influence. This can often happen in larger organisations who are engaging software vendors to deliver a pre-packaged solution for example. You can bet your grandma there will be changes needed at some point during the development or installation phase, because sales people are generally motivated by the sale, not the build.

The sales guy gets a high five, hand balls the project to the PM and goes out for Friday night drinks. Job done!

Hey, don’t hate the sales guy just yet, I’m sure they will have kindly included a ‘support and maintenance’ option in the sale!

Sounds ideal doesn’t it, but here is what will happen.

A few changes will be requested and some bright spark will suggest using some of the support hours to cover this. Great idea! But do want to be responsible for using up the clients post project insurance? Do you really want to take the wrap for the sales guys who cut the fat in the first place, and leave the project knowing the client is in debt for 4 months’ worth of support? No.

So do yourself a favour, expect change and plan for this inevitability the best way you can.

About the Author

Caralyne Blackburn Maglis is a leading technical project manager with an enviable track record in technical project delivery. Caralyne has worked in development companies, IT departments, agency and now in consulting providing Digital Rehab some of the finest honed experience and insights.

The answer is, yes.

Rather than technical skills or experience, a non-technical digital project manager can rely on a different skill set – the ‘human skill set’.

To be successful, the PM will need to be in as close contact with the technical work teams as possible. This is easier for the smaller organisations or in-house development, but the principle can apply to larger scale or external development work.

It’s not always easy going for a non-tech PM, but if you apply these ‘human skills’ and take notice of the way your technical teams are working and delivering, this is often a good approach. Even without knowing the technical intricacies of the work being produced, you will get a good indication that your teams are capable of producing quality work if you pay attention to the details.

• Are they doing over time?
• Do they appear overly stressed?
• Are smaller things continually being delivered off-specification?
• Is their team manager or senior person accessible to them?

And if you yourself are unsure or a little confused, you can bet that the teams are too.

One thing I have learned is that software developers often take the approach of “it’s easier if I stay back late and re-code this crappy work myself” or “I could add some real value if I build this extra function”…! These guys and girls are heroes, they are making you look good and they are saving your bacon, right? Well in truth, they are definitely heroes, but potentially they are doing more harm than good from a project management point of view.

Signs like this are red flags that your project may be about to veer off track, so take notice and stay in touch with the tech teams as much as you can.

Potentially, bigger issues are being covered up and you are not being told soon enough or they are concentrating on functionality that would be totally cool to have, but not what was paid for.

Take note, this kind of thing happens often and it always happens for a reason.

• The work was spec’d incorrectly
• There has been a mis-communication
• The developers weren’t involved in the planning and accordingly the spec is full of holes
• On larger projects, maybe the separate development teams do not understand the cross over in their work or worse, their own delivery requirements or interdependencies

So while there is significant benefit in understanding the context of the work to be produced, so you yourself can mitigate any holes or mis-communication up front, it’s just as important to understand people.

So to be successful as a non-technical PM in a technical project, know your people and get to know the status of the work being produced and know what your developers are actually doing. Be prepared to ask them to show you which particular requirement they are working on and/or raise a flag if your gut tells you too.

We all have that little voice in our heads and it is a valuable thing. Listen to it.

About the Author

Caralyne Blackburn Maglis is a leading technical project manager with an enviable track record in technical project delivery. Caralyne has worked in development companies, IT departments, agency and now in consulting providing Digital Rehab some of the finest honed experience and insights.

Alisdair Blackman presents to MLC Corporate Super Specialist Network (CSSN) members on the importance of marketing in their ability to attract and acquire new prospective members for their corporate employer superannuation funds.

While in transit on a recent trip to Hanoi, I take a moment to reflect on my historic prejudice and reluctance for offshoring work. I question why I have such prejudice and challenge myself to debate out the strengths and weaknesses. Here are my musings.

Always my concerned is with ‘quality’. For some reason, until now I associate development work from Asia, Indian, Africa and South America to be inferior or even ‘shoddy’. Yet, as I reflect on this – there is no basis in holding such a prejudicial view particularly when you consider that much of the worlds manufacturing takes place across these same geographies.

Up until 2011, I only ever worked with technical companies and partners within Australia. I was late on the ‘takeup’ of resourcing projects abroad.

Many, if not all who have previously engaged with offshore developers will have their own stories (both good and bad) to share. From my experience after dabbling on development engagements across India, Poland, Romania, Philippines and now Vietnam, offshoring can provide much needed scalability, access and talent needed to provide capacity to deliver upon projects.

While the lure of affordability and different time zones is incredibly enticing, it is the language barrier and lack of processes that represent considerable risk.

There are a large number of positives and reasons that substantiate the need and value of offshoring but even so, I cannot help but still think, if you are going to offshore medium to large projects, you at very least need to jump a plane and work with the respective teams face-to-face to head off risks borne from miscommunication.

Given the costs and frankly the lack of attainable talent in Australia, it has meant that business has been forced to look abroad to fill the void. I have no issues with this practice at all – just that clients need to have a better comprehension as to what it means.

While it is entirely possible to save on expensive local development costs by electing to use offshore teams, the burden falls very heavily on the project management role and function to be able to mediate, coordinate and over communicate with offshore teams – save for more efficient processes and systems. In my view, this impost on the PM function increases time and thus costs around project management duties.

Given that I have now offshored over 100 projects, 20 most recently to a new partner in Vietnam, I see huge value and benefits of offshoring from a clients standpoint. I just think that with offshoring comes increased need for PM and more regular communication. If this is properly factored, then offshoring is a very advantageous delivery option for anyone looking for software or application development.

About the Author

Alisdair Blackman has been at the forefront of digital project management for over 18 years. Having run a number of agencies he now is committed to consulting clients to partner with them and to ensure projects are delivered on-time, on-budget and to the highest quality by either local or offshore vendors.