If your Marketing Operations Department uses multiple agencies for SEO, Web, CRM, treat them as #team members, not vendors.
Not many companies have a clear #communication plan or channel that includes all Digital Marketing vendors. Sure, email works, but lacks traceability, and some times not everyone is able to align fast enough.
As one of the key points to this type of planning, enabling a single source of updates and last minute communication dramatically increases the way vendors interact towards projects.
Let's say your Development Agency is not aware of an integration that your SEO team is planning to do. You as a Marketing Ops Manager agree with the timeframe to implement, but don't inform the corresponding team in charge of maintaining the site.
Then, the integration is executed, but was not properly implemented, backfiring in an error that brings the site down.
The dev team now invests time troubleshooting from scratch, increasing downtime and ultimately leading to a slower recovery.
Chances are that, if the right team was brief on the initiative, they would have had enough knowledge beforehand, to invest less time fixing any issue in general, when initiatives happen.
Now, how could you possibly put a band-aid while you set up a nice communication plan?
If your company uses a collaborative software solution, experiment by setting up a dedicated channel for vendor updates and provide access to your teams to the system that your company has designated.
For example, Microsoft Teams allows you to add guests to your channels, so information and updates are more democratically available to everyone involved in supporting your MOPS department.
A great, free alternative AND a personal favorite, is Slack. I've come across companies that have been able to improve their communication with vendors securely and at a starting price of $0, just by enabling a Free tier account to start communicating with members and stakeholders.
Obviously, (and I can't stress this enough) plan before implementing any tech. Without strategy, Martech is just...tech.
Have you worked managing different vendors at the same time?
Feel free to share your experiences.
