A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

Managing relationships

Interfacing with marketing

and corporate communications

Interfacing with IT

Staff development, education

and retention

Managing external relationships.

Vendor selection and management

Managing improvement

and change

Management pr

ocesses

As part of the research, respondents were asked what their main challenges were and these 

highlighted the issues of gaining sufficient resources for Internet marketing. Their key chal‑

lenges included:

● 

Gaining buy‑in and budget consistent with audience media consumption and value 

generated.

● 

Conflicts of ownership and tensions between a digital marketing team, traditional market‑

ing, IT, and finance and senior management.

● 

Coordination with different channels in conjunction with teams managing marketing pro‑

grammes elsewhere in the business.

● 

Managing and integrating customer information about characteristics and behaviours col‑

lected online.

● 

Achieving a unified reporting and performance improvement process throughout the 

business including reporting, analysis and actioning suggested changes.

● 

Structuring the specialist digital team and integrating into the organisation by changing 

responsibilities elsewhere in the organisation.

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Part 3  Implementation

● 

Insourcing vs outsourcing online marketing tactics, i.e. search, affiliate, email marketing, PR.

● 

Staff recruitment and retention since there is a shortage of digital marketing skills given 

the rapid growth in demand for these skills, which gives great opportunities for everyone 

reading this book!

After initial qualitative interviews, identifying the type of challenges faced by an e‑commerce 

manager, a wider survey identified how common these problems were. The responses of 

e‑commerce managers are summarised in Figure 10.3.

The research showed that managing the interfaces between the e‑commerce team and 

other parts of the organisation was a major challenge for many organisations. Managing 

these interfaces is a key role of the head of e‑commerce and managers within their team. 

Every respondent articulated the need for education of colleagues in the organisation about 

the benefits of e‑commerce and the changes in processes required to achieve these benefits. 

This need for education was mentioned with respect to three main parts of the organisation: