Tips

Why should I hire an agency?

Digitalization has meant that companies' digital presence has gone from being one of many different activities on their agenda to becoming an integrated part of their core business. In other words, it is prioritized in a completely different way than before - for some companies even a matter of survival

The fact that digital presence is given higher priority also means that companies allocate more resources to become competitive in this area. Projects that were previously side projects are now business-critical and are assigned more people and larger budgets. There is a concerted effort

It also means that departments that previously only had loose collaborations now have to collaborate deeply in order to deliver truly competitive digital services and products. The marketing department, the IT department and the sales organization are expected to be able to work on the same project, with a shared process toward a common goal

This development is something we see with most of our clients and we of course ask ourselves: how can we help them in the best way? Or, turning it around and looking at the question from our customers' perspective: why should I hire an agency?

Some agencies have chosen to bury their heads in the sand and treat it as a non-issue. Questioning one's own role and raison d'être is considered taboo by many agencies. We don't see it that way. It doesn't matter what we think of ourselves if the view is not shared by our customers. That's why we're happy to talk about our role as an agency. Our analysis is that a good agency collaboration is more important than ever

Let's look at the alternatives

1. Build up your own in-house team2. Assemble a team of consultants and freelancers3. Collaborate with an agency

Build your own in-house team

If the digital presence is a priority you want it close to the core business. One way to create this proximity is to recruit your own team to sit in-house. There are several advantages to this. On the one hand you get people who over time learn the company and the business, and they are also on site at all times. On the other hand, the team is exposed to natural knowledge sharing within the organisation.

At the same time there are disadvantages. It can be difficult for many organisations to compete for the most talented employees — the tasks may not become sufficiently exciting and challenging. There is also a risk that over time the team hardens into outdated routines, gets stuck in familiar patterns and is held back by internal policies and obstacles. Exposure to other projects and industries also becomes limited because employees do not encounter them naturally in their daily work. The risk is therefore high that you will not achieve the effect you want, because the team becomes more of a digital service unit than a team that can challenge and find new paths for the company.

Put together a team of consultants and freelancers

This is not an uncommon strategy and it has its advantages, but also drawbacks. One advantage is that you avoid recruiting and hiring in-house expertise and you don’t take on any long-term employer responsibilities. It also becomes easier to find top-notch developers or designers. Since you are the one who assembled the team, you also have significant control over what they will work on.

But what feels flexible can also create major problems in the long run. Full control also means you carry all the responsibility — you are the one who must lead the work and drive the project forward. If you fail to do that, you’ll be left with a team of consultants that keep costing you money without giving you anything useful in return. Last but not least, you take a very large long-term risk. Consultants you hire on contract will move on to other clients with other projects when the contract expires. There is nothing in this arrangement that guarantees continuity and loyalty to you as the client

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Collaborate with an agency

In an agency collaboration you solve many of the problems that are built into the two other options.

You gain access to skilled colleagues with broad experience from many different industries and projects. An agency has a business model that naturally attracts driven, efficient and competent people.
You get a good balance between the need to be close to your core business and at the same time remain outside it in order to be able to challenge long-established truths and old ways of looking at the business. You gain that closeness through the long-term collaboration with the agency. There is a team at the agency that follows you as a client. They do not disappear off to other assignments as consultants tend to do, but are there when you need them. When they are not working on your specific project, the people in this team are involved in other projects with other clients. They are then exposed to new ideas and new technology in a completely different way than a team sitting in-house is.
You gain access to a lean, efficient and competitive organisation. An agency's only revenue comes from its projects. An agency that fails to deliver business value in its projects or that falls behind in terms of processes, technology or design quickly goes under because no one wants to collaborate with them. Successful agencies are constantly competing and challenging to get to work on the most exciting projects. In our view we achieve this through efficient processes, high-calibre ideas and creative concepts, being at the technological forefront and creating a world-class user experience. Simply put, delivering business value and future-proofing our clients' digital business.
An agency takes the production lead on its clients' projects. This means that as a client you can let go of much of the operational work and focus on business value, customer experience and innovation. That does not mean you lose control of your project, but rather that you avoid having to engage in every detail. You can choose to what extent you want to follow the project — we as the agency adapt our process accordingly.

Finally

You are reading this article on our website and of course we are speaking in our own interest when we claim that the agency as a business model is more relevant than ever. But it also seems that our clients share this view. We experience this both in our day-to-day collaboration — in meetings, presentations and workshops — and when we are judged on what we deliver and in the feedback we receive via the annual customer survey Agency of the Year.

Key components for a successful agency collaboration are close cooperation, good personal chemistry, clear processes, a focus on business value and high quality in every part of the deliverables. We work hard on all these components and, judging by our customer feedback, we are doing a good job.