INMA_A01.QXD

 Stakeholders. The impact of the web site on other members of the organisation should

not be underestimated. Internal staff may need to refer to some of the information on

the web site or use its services.

While the site sponsor and site owner will work within the company, many organisa-

tions outsource the other resources since full-time staff cannot be justified in these roles.

There are a range of different choices for outsourcing which are summarised in Activity 7.1.

We are seeing a gradual blurring between these different types of supplier as they recruit

expertise so as to deliver a ‘one-stop shop’ or ‘full-service agency’, but they still tend to be

strongest in particular areas. Companies need to decide whether to partner with the best

of breed in each, or to perhaps compromise and choose the one-stop shop that gives the

best balance and is most likely to achieve integration across different marketing activities –

this would arguably be the new media agency or perhaps a traditional marketing agency

that has an established new media division. Which approach do you think is best?

Observation of the practice of outsourcing suggests that two conflicting patterns

are evident:

1 Outside-in. A company starts an e-business initiative by outsourcing some activities

where there is insufficient in-house expertise. These may be areas such as strategy or

online promotion. The company then builds up skills internally to manage these

areas as e-business becomes an important contributor to the business. The company

initially partnered with a new media agency to offer online services, but once the

online contribution to sales exceeded 20% the management of e-commerce was taken

inside. The new media agency was, however, retained for strategy guidance. An out-

PLANNING WEB SITE DESIGN AND BUILD

Activity 7.1 Options for outsourcing different e-marketing activities

Purpose

To highlight the outsourcing available for e-business implementation and to gain an

appreciation of how to choose suppliers.

Activity

A B2C company is trying to decide which of its e-business activities it should outsource.

Select a single supplier that you think can best deliver each of these services indicated in

Table 7.1. Justify your decision.

Table 7.1 Options for outsourcing different e-business activities

E-marketing function Traditional Digital ISP or Management

marketing marketing traditional consultants

agency agency IT supplier

1 Strategy

2 Design

3 Content and service development

4 Online promotion

5 Offline promotion

6 Infrastructure

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