Where are all the Scottish eCommerce Consultants?

I've lived in Scotland for around 6 months now, having moved here from London. I've therefore been doing all I can to promote and develop the eCommerce market north of the border... I've met with quite a few prospects, clients, industry leaders, agency folk and anyone else I can to increase my business network in Glasgow, Edinburgh and further afield.

However, there's no getting around it, the ecommerce market in Scotland is on average) less mature and smaller in scale than that of London or The Midlands.

This also means that I've not found many eCommerce consultants knocking about, who do what I do:

• Strategic advice (incl multi-channel retail)
• Business analysis and benchmarking
• Programme Management of large / complex projects
• User experience best practice and conversion improvement
• Digital analytics and insight
• Online marketing optimisation

In fact, a search on Google for "Scottish eCommerce Consultant" just tends to mainly bring up old job adverts for roles that are neither really eCommerce or Consultant focused.

So if you are a digital or eCommerce consultant based in Scotland, or just want to know what one does in more detail, please get in touch.

Hayden

eCommerce Programme or Project Manager? Part 2

This is the second of 2 postings on the difference between an eCommerce Progamme or Project Manager. The earlier part can be found here.

Responsibility
It’s a natural effect that the bigger the amount of work to be done, the more there is at stake throughout a business. Although this risk is typically financial, it could also have other important effects on your existing business. With this risk comes the responsibility of reporting it to senior people (with the aim that they can mitigate it as much as possible)… who in-turn may have directors, owners or shareholders to keep happy.
Keeping the senior stakeholders informed on a large online project can often be a role in itself and I would always recommend that the Programme Manager contributes or even runs the regular senior meeting attended by all relevant parties. The ability to participate in or even chair these sorts of meetings typically requires additional communication, influencing, or other skills that are usually beyond those needed of a Project Manager.

Coherence of Effort
When your ecommerce requirements need a programme of work, then it is essential to have a coherent overview of all effort. This is to ensure that there is no unnecessary overlap or conflict in tasks & deliverables. Although a Project Manager will be responsible for the effort within one project, the eCommerce Programme Manager must understand all possible touch points across all pieces of work for all projects. If there are any interdependencies, the programme manager must be responsible for ensuring that each Project Manager is aware of them and takes on the responsibility to their project.

Ultimate Value to the Business
A project manager has key performance indicators to report on, mainly that of the project running on time, ins cope and to budget. These are the main factors for a project to align to its business case and if it will be ‘judged’ as a pass or fail.
The ecommerce programme manager however must look at the overall value to the business for each component of the programme of work. They must be able to justify why each piece of work is important to the long term return on investment of ecommerce to the organisation.

Prioritisation
All of the above lead into prioritisation of effort and resource allocation – which is fundamentally different between a project manager and a programme manager. The programme manager must have the ability to override a project manager’s plan for the ‘greater good’ of the ecommerce programme of work and delivering the maximum value to the business.

In summary, there are significant differences in both roles and as the key stakeholder of the you need to decide which one(s) you really need to ensure all your initiatives are a success in the long term.

eCommerce Programme or Project Manager? What's the difference?

I’ve been asked the question several times before, so it is good to be able to explain what I believe is actually the difference between and eCommerce project or programme manager

For me the distinct difference between an eCommerce Project and an eCommerce Programme Manager is the basis of what drives their day to day activities. In essence this can be broken down in 6 areas:

Scale
Although the size of the project should not necessarily dictate whether you need to use a programme manager or not, there’s a growing view that when an eCommerce or Multi-Channel project gets to a certain size you move on from needing ‘just’ a project manager. The counter claim is that a project manager should be sufficient to run a single project no matter what the size.
I’m firmly in the latter camp on this one and believe that one eCommerce project should have one project manager… but here’s the important point: when a project is too big for a single person to manage effectively (e.g. a complete green-field project for a multi-national retailer) then it should either be broken up into phases for serial delivery over time or treated as a modular programme of work. For a programme of work, you would then need a programme manager and potentially multiple project managers.

Hierarchy/People Management
Not all programme managers are good people managers and just because someone manages a number of project managers this does not necessarily make them a programme manager.
But once you have both a Programme Manager and a Project Manager working together… then it is an obvious step to have the more junior person report into the senior. I have also seen situations where the Programme Manager has either had matrix or proper line-management responsibility for other members of the delivery team, such as business analysts and the PMO (Programme Management Office/r) or any resource that does not need to be dedicated to a single project for its entire duration. Let’s also not forget that that the practice of eCommerce has been established in many organisations for over a decade now and that you may find a Programme Manager having management of the ‘business as usual’ work-stream as well as delivering new functionality.

Update 19/8/2011: the second part can now be found here .