This post is by Darren Woolley, Founder of TrinityP3. With his background as analytical scientist and creative problem solver, Darren brings unique insights and learnings to the marketing process. He is considered a global thought leader on agency remuneration, search and selection and relationship optimisation.
Increasing the performance and the efficacy of the commercial relationships managed by marketing is important and there are a number of different systems and platforms available to assist with this. These range from simple score cards to systems that measure, manage and maximise the alignment and collaboration.
Within the Marketing FIRST Forum we have developed two such systems that provide marketers, their agencies and procurement access to a full range of methodologies. From a simple score card completed by the marketing team of the agency to a two way evaluation and a multi-team or group evaluation on collaboration and performance.
These systems are Hainsight and Evalu8ing.
Hainsight is an online evaluation tool designed to conduct formal performance evaluations of the working relationship between marketers and communication agencies.
We have created Hainsight™ because we believe transparency in the relationship between marketers and agencies is the foundation for successful relationships and ultimately successful results.
Hainsight™ provides three evaluation types:
1. Marketer evaluates Agency performance
This evaluation is a light one-way evaluation, where only the Marketer evaluates the performance of the Agency.
The Agency is evaluated on four General Capabilities: Account Management, People, Cooperation and Results providing clear and actionable information on how the Marketer evaluates the Agency.
In a 90° evaluation it is not possible to include your own questions.
2. Marketer and Agency evaluates Agency performance
This evaluation is an in-depth one-way evaluation, where both the Marketer and the Agency evaluates the performance of the Agency.
The agency is evaluated on four General Capabilities: Account Management, People, Cooperation and Results and a set of questions within a Specialist Capability.
The results of the evaluation provide clear and actionable information on how the Marketer evaluates the Agency as well as provides information on the Agency’s performance self-assessment. Furthermore a gap analysis is provided.
In a 180° evaluation it is possible to include your own questions.
3. Marketer and Agency evaluates each other’s performance and conducts a performance self-assessment
This evaluation is an in-depth two-way evaluation, where both Marketer and Agency evaluates each other as well as conduct a performance self-assessment.
The Agency is evaluated within four General Capabilities: Account Management, People, Cooperation and Results and a set of questions within a Specialist Capability.
The results of the evaluation provide clear and actionable information on how the Marketer and Agency evaluates each other as well as provides information on the performance self-assessment by both parties. Furthermore a gap analysis is provided.
In a 360° evaluation it is possible to include your own questions.
Evalu8ing is an online evaluation system that allows you to measure and investigate the performance of marketing and agency relationships across multiple agencies and multiple markets all at once, allowing side by side comparison. Up to eight defined groups can be included in any survey. This could be six marketing teams working with the same creative and media agency or one marketing team working with up to seven different agency types.
We have created Evalu8ing because we believe that in the increasingly complex marketing process, there is a need to be able to measure, manage and maximise the level of performance, alignment and collaboration between the many multiple stakeholder groups working together. This can be various marketing teams, agencies, or production teams. These teams may be all internal, external and internal, in one market, or spread across multiple markets.
Evalu8ing provides three types of evaluation:
1. Performance
The Evalu8ing system allows you to customise the questions to suit the metrics and attributes you want to measure, manage and maximise.
There are more than 120 questions which have been tested and proven across five key categories including Culture, Collaboration, Communication, Project Management and Strategy. Or we can customise the questions to suit your specific needs.
We recommend no more than 20 questions in the survey as this will take the average participant around 15 minutes to complete, no matter how many groups you are evaluating.
To make it a true level playing field assessment all groups answer the same panel of questions.
2. Relationship
The Evalu8ing system lets you explore the alignment, balance and performance between all groups within the survey. You can measure the relationships between marketers and their agencies, you can explore how agencies are working together. Or how marketing teams are working together.
The fact that all parties are evaluating each other against the same questions and criteria and that this is occurring within the one survey means that you can immediately see where the relationships are aligned and where they may be out of balance.
Sharing the results of the survey with the group or team leaders and facilitating discussion not just on the scores but also the commentary leads to greater alignment and productive improvement in addressing issues and building these relationships.
3. Alignment & Collaboration
Where marketers are working with multiple agencies or multiple marketing teams are working with the same agencies, the ability to compare and contract the results in the individual relationships and across all relationships leads to greater insights and understanding of the issues.
It allows you to identify isolated issues and more systemic issues, which may not be obvious in single relationship surveys.
A video explaining how Evalu8ing works can be seen here
So there you are, two systems for measuring agency / client relationships. They can be configured to: provide an automated score card of agency performance (Hainsight) or measure the relationship between parties (Evalu8ing and Hainsight) or even measure alignment, collaboration and performance across multiple teams and groups.
What are you using to measure, manage and maximise your business relationships? And how successful is this approach?
Let us know by leaving a comment.
