[PODCAST] – Alyson Caffrey – Breaking down operational issues to make them clear, easy and actionable

How much of your time gets eaten up by deadly scope creep? Has a client ever requested a major change to their project after you were already neck deep in work? How do you say “no” and still save the relationship with the client?
How do you keep your clients and your service department on the same page?
As I am sure you already know, there are thousands of moving parts to managing a digital marketing project. Managing a digital project creates a unique set of problems that offline
projects do not encounter. For example, expectation levels are extremely difficult to define.

With virtual products, the client cannot physically hold or walk through it with you. If you build a house, the client can physically walk through the house, touch the countertops. There’s a “WOW” moment when you deliver a new house to a client. With a digital asset, there’s nothing to physically walk through or touch. And what’s worse, for people who aren’t familiar with the virtual world, they perceive everything digital to be “easy,” so they ask for outrageous things that would never be asked for in the physical project management world.
You must have a strict project management process that ensures proper signoffs from the client, strict guidelines for the project managers to follow, and knowing when to escalate to management or present change orders if something happens outside of those guidelines. All of these can be moments in a project lifecycle that can either cause major problems and maximize scope creep in your projects, OR create happy clients and a happy and productive sales department.