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  Agile  development 

  An  iterative  approach 

to developing software 

and website functionality 

with the emphasis 

on face-to-face 

communications to 

elicit, define and test 

requirements.   

  Scrum 

  A  methodology  that 

supports agile software 

development based on 

 15–  30-day  sprints  to 

implement features from 

a product backlog.   

  Human  resource  requirements 

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491

Chapter 10  Change management

Even more problematic than selecting the right type of staff is attracting and retaining 

digital business staff. If we want effective, experienced staff then these will demand high sala‑

ries. We will be competing for these staff with  dot‑  com companies that are trying to recruit 

and also other established medium‑to‑large companies that are looking to build a digital 

business capability. Smaller companies will have an even trickier problem of needing to find 

all of these skills rolled into one person!

Figure 10.8

Typical structure and responsibilities for a large e-commerce team

Source: E-consultancy (2005).

PPC search

specialist

Acquisition

(Digital Marketing

Manager)

Direct

Acquisition

SEO search

specialist

Interactive ad

specialist

Creative

developer

Affiliate

specialist

Partner

Acquisition

Sponsorship

specialist

Online PR

specialist

Development and

change manager

Conversion/

Proposition

Development

Development

planning

Requirements

analyst

Information

architect

Usability

analyst

Project

manager

Development:

implementation

Web designer

Web developer

(coding or admin)

Creative and

copy creation

Content metadata

administrator

Content

management

Business,

country

marketing

Online

copy writer

Translator

Sales

analyst

Retention

E-commerce/

Direct Sales

Manager

E-CRM

Manager

Promotions

Exec

Email marketing

Messaging

Community

manager

E-CRM (cust data)

Executive

Customer

service also

within retention

Telesales/

Customer support

Operations

Customer

service

Agency,

Business,

country

marketing

IT or

Agency

Business

country

marketing

Operations

Contact

Centre

Online

Support agent

Web analytics

Analysis &

Reporting

Commercial

anaylst (MI)

Service

level manager

Infrastructure

Finance/

Business,

Reporting

IT or hosting

company

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Part 3  Implementation

Staff retention

The difficulties in staff resourcing for digital business do not end with the recruitment of 

staff. As Crush (2000) says, ‘Getting good staff is difficult, keeping them is a nightmare!’ 

Since there is a highly competitive marketplace for digital business staff, many staff will want 

to move on to further their career. This will often be after the company has spent some time 

training them. The job characteristics model developed by Hackman and Oldham (1980) 

provides a useful framework for designing jobs that provide a good experience to improve 

staff motivation and so help retention. The five intrinsic characteristics of a job are:

1 

Skill variety.

2 

Task identity, how well the work is defined relative to other tasks and whether an employee 

sees a job through ‘from start to finish’.

3 

Task significance or the importance of the work.

4 

Autonomy or freedom in completing work.

5 

Feedback from employer.

To enhance these psychological characteristics Hackman and Oldham (1980) suggest the fol‑

lowing approaches can be used:

● 

Task combination – by combining tasks employees see more of the whole task.

● 

Natural workgroups – this also helps in task combination through creating a team to com‑

plete tasks.

● 

Establish customer relations – this helps in task significance.

● 

Vertical loading – employees take responsibility for tasks completed by supervisors.

● 

Opening feedback channel – from internal or external customers, via managers where 

necessary.

As well as making employees’ roles more challenging and enjoyable, another approach is to 

share the skills between staff, so that if key staff leave, then not all their knowledge will leave 

with them. Certain types of collaboration referred to in the E‑consultancy (2005) report can 

assist with staff sharing knowledge and experience:

● 

Co‑locating staff – including marketing staff in the digital team or e‑commerce staff in the 

marketing team was mentioned.

● 

 Job‑  swapping – a slightly different approach, which also involves co‑location, was noted as 

effective.

● 

Interim collaborative teams (‘SWAT’ teams) – a temporary  multi‑  disciplinary team (for 

example, teams from e‑commerce, marketing and technology) is formed to drive a partic‑

ular initiative or performance improvement, e.g. home page improvement, web analytics 

or supporting customer journeys between channels. This approach is reported to be used 

by Amazon.

● 

Creation of a central ‘Centre of Excellence for Digital Marketing’ can provide a clear 

resource which marketing staff can turn to for advice and  best‑  practice documentation. 

Members of this team can also be involved in proactively ‘spreading the word’ through 

involvement in training or operational campaign planning.

● 

Combined planning sessions – rather than the digital team developing a plan and then 

discussing with the marketing team who may then incorporate it into their plan, a more 

collaborative approach is used with both working on creating an integrated plan.

Outsourcing

Given the difficulties of recruiting new business staff referred to above, many companies 

turn to third parties to assist with their digital business implementation. However, there is a 

bewildering series of supplier choices. Complete Activity 10.2 to help understand the choices 

required.

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Chapter 10  Change management

We are seeing a blurring between the types of supplier shown in Table 10.3 as they recruit 

expertise so as to deliver a ‘ one‑  stop shop’ service, though they still tend to be strongest in 

particular areas. Companies need to decide whether to partner with the best of breed in each, 

or to compromise and choose the  one‑  stop shop that gives the best balance; this would argu‑

ably be the new media agency or perhaps a traditional marketing agency that has an estab‑

lished new media division. Which approach do you think is best?

The increased use of outsourcing marks a move towards the virtual organisation. With 

the introduction of electronic networks such as the Internet it becomes easier to outsource 

aspects of the production and distribution of goods to third parties. Hallowell (2001) notes 

that the degree to which businesses can automate or outsource their human resources is 

strongly dependent on the type and level of service expected for a particular type of product. 

This can be significant in governing their 

scalability

 or capacity for growth without taking 

on additional staff. He says that customer services in e‑commerce are:

described as ‘virtual’ (either pure information or automated) and ‘physical’ (requiring 

some degree of human intervention) . . .  because the nature and quantity of physical ser‑

vice necessary to deliver value to customers influences the quantity of human interven‑

tion required, it also influences a firm’s ratio of variable to fixed costs, which alters its 

‘scalability’. The paradox comes in that while reduced scalability is viewed negatively by 

Scalability

The ability of an 

organisation or system 

to adapt to increasing 

demands being placed 

on it.

Activity 10.2

Options for outsourcing different digital business activities

Purpose

To highlight the outsourcing available for digital business implementation and to gain 

an appreciation of how to choose suppliers.

Activity

A B2C company is trying to decide which of its  sell-  side digital business activities it 

should outsource. Select a single supplier (single tick for each function) that you think 

can best deliver each of these services indicated in Table 10.3. Justify your decision.

Answers to activities can be found at www.pearsoned.co.uk/chaffey