Getting the Most from Agency Partners- ANA June FORWARD Article

Included in the June ANA issue of FORWARD is a thought-leadership article by Richard Benyon, CEO of Decideware, titled "Why the Right Scope of Work is So Important: An Effective Scope of Work Ensures the Right Work Gets Done in the Right Way".

In this article, Richard discusses how a well planned scope of work can provide benefits that every marketer wants:  having the right team, working on the right assignments, at the right time.  Having the right team assigned to each deliverable provides a way to gain better marketing outcomes - by ensuring the agency's more experienced team is focused on key strategic deliverables and more complex work and the newer, less experience team is focused on lower complexity work.

For analytical purposes, where the type of work is talent-oriented, it is useful to collect a detailed staffing plan for each deliverable. This can be used to analyze both the functional and seniority mixes and to ensure that the right team is working on the right business. 

Overall when building a specification, there are key factors that should be identified: 

• Type and complexity - The type of work (concepting, adapting, refreshing, localizing) combined with the relative complexity of the work, has a major impact on what kind of seniority mix is required. 
• Revisions and rework - The amount of creative rework needed can be a critical driver of cost.  It is useful to understand during the estimation process, the budgeted number of rounds of revision. During the project, a properly defined brief is the key to reducing the number of rounds of revision.
• Stage in lifecycle - Understanding the context of the brand journey and where the work fits into that lifecycle is crucial. For example, products that are in launch phase typically require higher levels of strategy and research; products in a growth phase might lend themselves to ideation while products in a mature phase may require more efficient production and content execution.