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Have Your Cake and Eat It Too….How a Single Niche Partner & Vendor Manager Can Change the Way You Work
“If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” ― Abraham Lincoln
Working efficiently is no longer a nice to have but a must-have in today’s global economy. In a competitive corporate landscape where executives in creative must show efficiency, cost savings and brand relevance to have a seat at the table – what new and innovative ways of working are you introducing?
Traditional Vendor Management Systems (VMS) are good in theory but not practicum for creative functions such as creative services and video. It limits the relationship with critical niche vendors and the ability in which they work. In organizations where procurement and finance driven VMS decisions are made, creative organizations can be impacted negatively as can their strategic niche vendors.
What if there was a different way of working? What if you had an opportunity to work with a niche vendor who could manage, assess and retain your creative vendors and partners and still gain the benefits of efficiency, cost savings, increased productivity and robust management information reporting? We know, that’s why we want you to keep reading!
When you manage 2,400+ Creative specialists across 300 cities, 60 countries on 6 continents across more than 280 of the Fortune 500, you’ve got a process…..for everything. Crews Control has been leveraging a custom built database to manage our business and the creative teams we have around the globe. Our 30 years in business managing creative and video teams for the largest brand in the world have been great experience for us to perfect our model and we are happy to announce that we’ve built a comprehensive model to share with our clients.
A few of the benefits include:
Single throat to choke. Having a single partner to be both a strategic alliance but the single point of accountability to agreed upon SLAs are of great benefit. It becomes a second layer of management before your teams are even involved. This single point of contact will typically have a dedicated account team to manage day-to-day operations as well as an executive sponsor to manage any challenges and escalations quickly.
Niche relevant experience. Having a partner that understands the intricacies and many moving parts of creative projects, vendors and deliverables is critical to the success of ensuring smooth operations of your video and creative services team. It also gives your vendors confidence and better relations are the delivered result of vendors having a creative centered VMS partner.
Cost savings as a result of managed competitive tension. When you leverage competitive tension among the strongest vendors and apply principals of competitive tension and balance it with volume, cost savings is the achieved result. A partner who has the experience and relationships to leverage such creative vendors and specialists can be an asset leveraging historical data to drive cost efficiency, managing an equitable process in line with Creative and Video best practices.
Management information reporting. Good decisions are made by leaders who have the necessary information to do so. Data is the secret for Creative and Video teams to define their best practices, their impact on the organizations business and their ROI. Capturing the Data is one thing, using the data to drive critical decisions around pricing, vendors to use, equipment, creative deliverables and more. Having a partner to help analyze that data and advise you is the difference between a partner and deliverable.
Take the opportunity to drive the discussion of consolidating creative vendors, before that decision is made for you. If you have a VMS relationship that you aren’t happy with, you can still drive the change you need to manage your creative projects using your favorite creative vendors. If you’d like to discuss this blog or ideas specific to your organization, email eliana@crewscontrol.com
About the author: Eliana Hassen is a strategist and marketing star who has spent over 20 years working with Fortune 500 brands and their creative service organizations
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