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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
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