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Aligning Your Web Initiative with Your Business
The document discusses the importance of aligning web initiatives with business goals, emphasizing the roles websites play in lead generation, education, and sales. It outlines steps for achieving (re)alignment, including gaining business unit input, assembling a web team structure, and linking web and business metrics. The document also highlights common causes of misalignment, such as poor communication and operational disconnects.
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Aligning Your Web Initiative with Your Business
- 1. Aligning Your WebInitiative with Your BusinessdotCMS Boot Camp14 April 2010
- 2. TodayWhat is Alignment?Whyshould you be Involved?Some Examples ā Good and BadThe Steps to (re) Alignment
- 3.
- 4. Why Should YouBe Involved?If you own the Web or even a part of itā¦ You may be responsible for alignmentEven if no one told you Ownership has its rewards
- 5. What Role DoesYour Site Play?GenerateLeads
- 6. What Role DoesYour Site Play?Education and Time Sensitive Information
- 7. What Role DoesYour Site Play?Drive Sales through Ease of Planning
- 8. What Role DoesYour Site Play?General Info.Portal
- 9. How to IdentifyItPoor Online/Offline Alignment
- 10. How to IdentifyItPoor Online/Offline Alignment
- 11. How to IdentifyItCall Center training budget cut 30%
- 12.
- 13. Pushes more folksto website for answers
- 14. But IA, Applicationsand Content have not been changed to cope with new realityPoor Operations Alignment
- 15. How to IdentifyItOnline event registration not integrated with Call Center event registration
- 16.
- 17. Missed opportunities toup-sell, cross-sellPoor Operations Alignment
- 18. What creates Mis-Alignment?1.Poor Communication that Results inā¦Online zigging and Offline zaggingArriving Late the the Party2. A Toxic Perception
- 19. Mt. Implementation(our ToxicPerception)Dāoh!PlanImplementMaintain
- 20. What creates Mis-Alignment?1.Poor Communication that Results inā¦Online zigging and Offline zaggingArriving Late the the Party2. A Toxic Perception3. The Realities of a Budget
- 21. The Steps to(re) Alignment1. Gaining BU Input2. Assembling a Team Structure3. Link Web and Business Metrics
- 22. The Steps to(re) AlignmentGaining BU Input Review or create a Design DocumentBU goals, audiences, functional reqs., content reqs., blueprint, wireframes http://www.webmonkey.com/2010/02/information_architecture_tutorial/
- 23. The Steps to(re) AlignmentGaining BU Input (contād) Treat BU as Customer and Strategy Partner
- 24. The Steps to(re) AlignmentGaining BU Input (contād) Treat BU as Customer and Strategy Partner
- 25. The Steps to(re) AlignmentGaining BU Input (contād) Integrate Your Agreements into SLAs Including client expectations
Editor's Notes
- #2Ā This presentation is possibly the most conceptual presentation during these 2-1/2 days of boot camp. I will talk about relationships within an organization ā not only the ones defined by dotted lines, but ones that span across departments, built on trust, meaningful contributions and goodwill. We will dip our toes into some of the key elements of Information Architecture as a device for defining and maintaining alignment. To take some of the key points from this presentation back home and make them work may require you to think differently about your responsibilities and how you interface with the organization. And as always, this is an interactive session ā it will make the presentation so much better to hear your thoughts, questions and challenges as I go through the presentation.I donāt know where the starting point is for people in this room. Some of you may have a very well defined, well oiled process established that keeps you plugged into your various academic departments, marketing, BUs or management. Others may have informal or possibly no processes in place. This presentation starts from the assumption that there is no or little in place.Like all of us in this room, I do a bunch of things ā partnerships, sales, participate in discussions about new products and services, some marketing. I guess what makes me qualified to speak about alignment is that I have been responsible for web teams in my two past jobs ā one with a 75 person company and one with a 700 person company. I have seen mis-alignment and quite possibly had been the one that created it.
- #4Ā Like different business units or colleges within a university, schooling Tuna have a separate but distinctly unified mission ā to hunt as a pack. They use coordinated actions to surround, stun and kill their prey. They can exist alone but are forced to cooperate in order to thrive. You will notice in the picture that not all fish in this school are moving in exactly the same direction ā but, their actions are coordinated in such a way as to make the pack stronger than the sum of its parts. This is how well-aligned organizations work. There is often a combination of a centralized and decentralized processes that keep a university or non-profit growing and prospering. Above all there is great communication between the various departments that help avoid duplication. The same holds true for the relationship between a business unit and its web team ā the actions of a business unit are that much more effective due to the presence of an integrated web infrastructure that supports or even creates good hunting opportunities for the business unit.
- #5Ā Where does the responsibility for alignment sit within your organization? In most small to medium sized organizations, responsibility is not explicit. Chances are that once the sites is built, people forget about it. Folks in academic departments or business units likely donāt think about alignment ā their minds may not be thinking about the digital representation of their business needs. It is my guess that in most organizations it is assumed that alignment is the responsibility of the web team ā even if content responsibility does not reside within the Web Team.
- #6Ā I guess the starting point for any we initiative is defining what role you want your site to play. Is it as a lead gen engine? An area to authenticate or validate your being? There is no better place to understand the alignment between a business and a web initiative than on the home page.Here are some examples of sites that have such focus you canāt help but believe there is alignment between the business and the web site. You begin to see how business needs are expressed through content, applications and information architecture
- #9Ā Not a bad site ā just one that is not as focused as others. Could still represent alignment between the business and the online expression of the business.
- #10Ā Offline is driving prospects to agents, with the promise that agents will provide a deeper discount than online
- #11Ā However, clearly the online team wants prospects to get a quote online ā and not through an agent. Poor online/offline alignment.
- #14Ā In your organization, this may well be the responsibility of someone outside of your team. And I am not advocating that you march down the hall and tell the owner of alignment that it is now your job. But in many organizations the reality is that your management ā whether it be a provost, VP of Communications or someone else ā really doesnāt care who owns it. They care that the organization operates like a sewing machine. Everyone communicates, participates fully and the most is made of every opportunity. If you step in when you see something mis-aligned, you will be a hero.
- #15Ā This is what usually happens. An organization gets very excited about a new site. Everyone rushes to evaluate a slew of CMSs, vast armies are recruited to knock out code, write copy, integrate and build applications. The sites go live and they all go away because the mountain has been built. The fervor dies down. And our mental state returns to Maintenance mode. What should happen is the opposite ā everything should build up to the point of launch, and the organizational adrenaline should maintain itself at a high level.
- #16Ā In your organization, this may well be the responsibility of someone outside of your team. And I am not advocating that you march down the hall and tell the owner of alignment that it is now your job. But in many organizations the reality is that your management ā whether it be a provost, VP of Communications or someone else ā really doesnāt care who owns it. They care that the organization operates like a sewing machine. Everyone communicates, participates fully and the most is made of every opportunity. If you step in when you see something mis-aligned, you will be a hero.
- #18Ā The various steps included in creating compelling information architecture are hugely important to not only kicking off a successful implementation, but also maintaining a post implementation laser like focus on what is most important to the business. The legacy product of an IA process is the design document. In it you will find all of the information required to maintain alignment with the business unit including goals, how those goals are expressed online, level of application integration and so much more. So go back to this document. If you donāt have such a document in house, I strongly prompt you to build one ā even if it does nothing more than state the business goals and how those goals will be expressed online.
- #19Ā Bring them unsolicited ideas
- #20Ā Set regular, recurring meetings to meet with the BU owners. Even if it is for only 15 mins over coffee, the gesture will go a long way in openning communication between the two organizations.
- #21Ā Communication from the departments or Bus must be a requirement ā notifications on key operational or strategic changes need to be part of all SLAs
- #22Ā This is possibly the most important slide of the presentation. Web Ops is the glue between the business and the tactical execution of the web team. If you donāt have your team aligned to these functions and responsibilities, maintaining alignment with the BUs or departments will be difficult.
- #23Ā If you have something as sophisticated as WebTrends (or another upper end analytics package) you can get some pretty nifty information. This assumes that your site is a key driver of sales.
- #24Ā Here is what we do at dotCMS. Traffic, origin or page views is less important to us. A key leading indicator of our lead flow are the number of downloads we receive on a weekly basis. This is a good example of a web metric that is tied to our business.