Dedicated Web Manager – Not In The Budget For Your Training Business?
Most, if not all, of the training organizations we now support lacked a dedicated senior resource to facilitate their online efforts. If they do, by the time they hire that person, the job has already grown into enough work for two people. It’s not about operating your online programs or managing the IT team that’s making changes to your website. Its about a level of focus that ensures that your website (and online strategy) plays the role it was meant to in meeting your business goals.
So what’s the value of a dedicated senior resource focused purely on your online efforts?
The big roadblocks to a successful online strategy are ideas and a perspective/process for filtering through them.
A dedicated resource has (as a mandate) the job of understanding your industry and its practices and successes in using the online space. With enough online experience, they can filter a large number of ideas into coherent options for consideration by your management team. This type of focus allows your website to match the impact that leading competitors in the training industry are getting from their online presence.
Lets look at an example.
We came in contact with a financial services company recently which was precisely in the situation we’re talking about here:
- Fantastic business with a clear and distinct value proposition,
- Great team and solid services offering
- Great portfolio of happy customers.
But no one was focusing on their online strategy in a consistent way. There were smart people (who really knew their business) working with a top notch design team to maintain a nice looking website.
More than anything, their ability to transition to a business model which full integrated their online presence into their overall business plan was stuck for two reasons.
- A lack of ideas on where to start and
- No expertise to narrow the options to ones which suited the nature of the company and its prospects.
With the recent launch of their new online presence, this company now puts its online strategy at the front of it plans for growth both domestically and internationally. We participate in management meetings with them (as part of an ongoing engagement with them) where their online presence is given equal footing to help address each business challenge they are facing. What was previously seen as a “blackbox” is now a key competitive advantage and is allowing them to pursue an aggressive international expansion strategy.
We know its not always possible….
To have a dedicated online manager who has time to contemplate the future of your web strategy. But that doesn’t mean your company shouldn’t have it at all. With something like your website, which has the potential to impact your business across key areas like Sales Results, Saving Resources, Competitiveness and Financial Results, you can’t go through a period without any focused attention to your online strategy.
Consider the possibility of an outside resource to bridge the gap while its not possible to dedicate a full time internal resource. Our model has been built to deliver big company online strategy and operations support to small and mid size organizations. Companies like ours recognize that while budget is a constraint, not focusing on a critical strategic resource like your website, can be more costly. So the best external partners structure their offerings to provide both ideas and expertise/framework to support your online efforts.
