Why your eCommerce Project needs an eCommerce Project Manager

Let’s imagine a situation that is becoming a pretty regular occurrence these days…
You have been given the go-ahead for developing (or re-developing) your company’s online store or multi-channel retail proposition. As the ‘business stakeholder’ you are far too busy running day-to-day operations (or fighting fires) and do not have the bandwidth to deliver this work yourself. You have a ‘sizeable’ budget to implement the right solution without cutting any major corners, but you have to have it live within pretty tight deadlines and it must be ‘right first time’
(Question: Does anyone get told “oh, its ok if you screw it up this time around, you’ll have plenty more chances to get it right in the future except politicians?”).
There are a number of things you can initially do to get things on their way, but here’s why I suggest you look at getting an eCommerce Project Manager in first.

1. Market knowledge
Unless you have recent prior experience of the eCommerce landscape (e.g. the vendors, products, prices and all their associated short-comings) then you are stepping into a virtual swamp, where three letter acronyms (TLA’s) abound and the initially-offered price of some web services could be overpriced from anything between 20% and 300% … or beyond.
Someone who has managed a project similar to the solution you are looking for should have some idea of the available services and be able to hold your hand through the early stages of the project.

2. You don’t always have the right person internally
It is an obvious statement to make, but to stand the best chance of having a well-managed project you need a project manager with the relevant experience. If you do not already have someone within your organisation that can correctly fill the eCommerce PM’s role then you really need to look outside. I’ve seen all sorts of people in the past drafted into the role who were clearly not able to run the online project. Examples include: a graphic designer who was friends with the chief executive’s wife, an IT manager who clearly had other important things on her mind (like running the IT department) and a member of the ecommerce team who “didn’t have anything else to do”. In each case project either failed to deliver completely or had to be rescued by stakeholders and/or external assistance.

3. If you don’t…. it will be you that gets asked to deliver it…

In essence….. If you really want an eCommerce project run well and do not want to be given the run-around by the project, then you need the right person to manage it.

The benefit of foresight

As a director of a digital consultancy and web agency, I get asked to pitch for work quite a bit these days. Often these requests are of the “we know what we want, how cheap can we get it?” sort… However these projects invariable end up with the client changing their mind once we have engaged with them and shown them what is now possible with the latest tools & technologies, an improvement on the user interface they thought they needed or more manageable in the longer-term.

However we always prefer to be part of any web project before this stage and to be involved in the pre-project planning (and sometimes ONLY involved in this stage if that is what is needed)/

The pre-project work means that we can:

1. Understand & document the business proposition and processes (multi-channel delivery, content management work-flow, etc.)



2. Define the overall scope and help detail the business requirements
   


3. Map typical customer profiles (e.g. CRM personas) to user journeys



4. Understand the non-functional requirements such as volume (how many) and performance (how fast) criteria
   


5. Provide best practice on product/vendor and service suppliers
   


6. Work with the different internal departments (e.g marketing, eCommerce, distribution, customer services) to prepare them for the
   project

We have found that helping clients at this early stage can not only help them start and deliver a project that is right-first-time, but one that is better suited to their needs going forward. Only then would we look to help them with: project/programme management, user experience, website design, development, testing, launch and subsequent online marketing skills.

It is perhaps a shame that this doesn’t happen as often as we would like.