CEO.com recently released a short study on “CEO Information Consumption: How Business Leaders Stay Informed” that contained the results of a joint study by CEO.com and Domo who surveyed more than 350 chief executives. With the goal of finding out how CEOs consume information, the study made one thing crystal clear for anyone looking to get ahead in their career. You have to read!

Consider the following responses to the question that asked what forms of media do you (as CEO) prefer?

• 02%: Podcast
• 08%: Video
• 18%: Inofographics
• 22%: No Preference
• 57%: Text

In other words, a total of 75%, or 3 out of every 4 CEOs, prefer to read. They don’t waste time on Youtube or Riotcast, they read. And, 3 out of 4 CEOs mostly consume information online! So read this blog, Supply Chain Matters, CPO Rising, Strategic Sourcing, and others that bring you education and insights on a daily basis and prepare yourself for career progression!

What else should you read? Based upon the top 10 business related searches for CEOs, you should also read:

1. Supply Chain News
   You may live and breathe supply chain every day, but sometimes it’s easy to get trapped in the trenches and fall behind on what’s happening in the marketplace. Good sources included Procurement Leaders, the Supply Chain Management Review (SCMR), and Spend Matters.
2. Market / Industry Trends
   It’s important to come up from the trenches on a regular basis to see where the industry is going and prepare yourself when it gets there. Good sources include The Economist, the ISM, and MetalMiner.
3. Supply Chain Insights / Expert Advice
   Chances are that your organization, even if you think it’s above average, is only average. An organization only remains above average if it is continually improving, and that requires fresh insights on a regular basis. Good sources include Tompkins International, Supply Chain Shaman, and Supply Business (the former CPO Agenda).
4. Technology Trends
   Technology drives the modern supply chain. Good sources include The MIT Technology Review, TechCrunch, and this blog^*.
5. Marketing Trends
   The lifeblood of a company is cash flow, and that comes from sales, generated by marketing. Getting a grip on what marketing is likely to be doing is key to cementing Supply Management’s place as the go-to organization for help and advice, which is where you need to be to get that critical spend under management and increase the value-add of the products and services you source. Since “good marketing” is largely a matter of opinion, I’m not going to direct you to any specific resources but advise you to get multiple inputs and take everything you get with a few grains of salt.
6. Competitor Analysis
   You don’t necessarily need to keep up with the Joneses, but you should be aware of what they are doing. For this, you will need to work with the analyst/market research firms and keep an eye on import data. SI recommends The Hackett Group and Supply Chain Insights in the former case and you can look to Zepol and Import Genius in the latter.
7. Case Studies
   Good case studies can often provide deep insights into improvement. In this case, look to the leading publications (including the SCMR and Supply Business (the former CPO Agenda referenced above)), purchasing associations (such as the Next Level Purchasing Association [now the Certitrek NLPA]), and leading Sourcing and Procurement Vendors (including SI sponsors BravoSolution and Wallmedien).
8. Executive Lifestyles
   While SI doesn’t recommend spending too much time on this one, because, even if you are a CPO, you probably don’t have much time to enjoy the executive lifestyle, it is important to understand what executives like to do in their spare time so you can relate to them when you get the opportunity. Once they see you in a positive light, that light may carry over to what you do (and help you close the disconnect). ^**
9. Webinars / Virtual Tradeshows / Events
   Busy executives don’t have a lot of time to travel to many events on top of all of the business travel they already have to do, and neither do you. So webinars are a good way to consume information quickly when you have a lunch hour free, for example. (Archived webinars are even better as you can scan the presentation and focus in on the key parts that are relevant to you.) Vendor web-sites are a great starting point for free (archived) webinars.
   Where events are concerned, focus on conferences that revolve around education, and not vendor offerings. And avoid the big expos like the plague (that they are a breeding ground for). Smaller groups allow for more interactive workshops and knowledge sharing between attendees, and tend to attract more senior, more experienced, and more career-focussed people. Procurement Leaders Conferences and the Next Practices Xchange are good examples of this type of event, and the upcoming Next Level Purchasing Association Conference should prove to be as well!
10. Speeches / Panel Discussions
    This is really a continuation of #9 and the search for knowledge. Don’t be afraid to branch out from Supply Management to spark the creative juices and ask TED.

Finally, when it comes to social media, take a tip from the CEOs and stick to LinkedIn. Most CEOs, especially those over 50, don’t waste any time on Facebook or Twitter.

^* (the doctor does have a PhD in Computer Science!)
^** Apparently, executives spend a lot of time thinking about their shoes. the doctor would like to think this is not the case, but considering that Jason Busch, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Spend Matters, has felt the need to educate the reader about shoes on multiple occasions (including posts about business shoes and shoe lessons), it probably is. 🙁

In our last post we explained that even though Marketing thinks its spend is sacred cow spend, it’s really not and that proper Agency Lifecycle Management techniques can be used to get a grip on marketing agency spend and manage it through the services lifecycle. We also explained that basic Agency Lifecycle Management consisted of four necessary steps: selection, scoping, briefing, and evaluation. In this post we’re going to dive a little bit deeper into the requirements of each step as Supply Management will not be able to support Marketing in Agency Lifecycle Management, and get its hands on that sacred cow spend, unless it has the appropriate processes and technologies.

Selection

In order to support the selection process, Supply Management will need to use a full featured RFI solution that can capture, at a minimum, the following agency information for each agency under consideration:

• firmographic data, including location, size, financial health, ownership, and affiliations
• (core) capabilities and resource availability
• (primary) and secondary specialties, and the relative percentage of business
• experience in the vertical(s) of interest
• (major) clients and (potential) conflicts

In other words, before a selection can be made, a rather complete profile is needed to narrow in on the agencies that are not only capable of doing the work, but appropriate with respect to the target mediums, populations, and desired branding. For complex requirements, you almost need a SIM application to capture, store, and analyze all of the data.

Scoping

Where Agency selection is concerned, it’s not as simple as just identifying the agencies that could do the work, it’s finding an agency that can do the work, do the work the way the Marketing department wants it done, commit the resources the Marketing department is acceptable with, and do so in the requisite timeframes. Where as any Tom, Dana, or Harry, at least in the eyes of a Marketing Department, can sweep a floor or use a copier, not just any Tom, Dana, or Harry is going to come up with that killer campaign. For that, you need a Sven, Celine, or Giorgio.

This requires, once potential candidate agencies are selected, the provision of a detailed scope of work and the collection of detailed responses to the scope of work that outline who the Agency has that can do the work, what the resources can do, when the resources can be devoted to the project, where the work will be performed, how the Agency intends to reach your target audience, and why the Agency is the best for the job at hand. This will require some back and forth negotiation until the response is acceptable to Marketing and the scope is acceptable to the Agency. Then an agreement can be cut. Then it’s on to the

Briefing

In the briefing phase, the scope of work is further refined to provide the Agency with details on demographics, target audience, budget, and desired creative elements for the current phase of the marketing campaign. Typically, the scope of work will be for the entire campaign and then a detailed briefing will be provided at the start of each phase. The Agency will then respond with any additional requests for clarification or refinement, some back and forth may occur, and then they will produce and, after the requisite review(s), deliver the work for the phase.

Evaluation

Marketing should be reviewing the results after each phase, particularly where the budget is concerned. If the scope of work was for a one year campaign, with a new set of tv, radio, and online advertisements each quarter, and halfway though the year the Agency has blown three quarters of the budget, something is very wrong. Marketing has to keep a continuous eye on budget, timelines, and (any measurable) results on a regular basis, and make sure everything goes to plan. This is where Supply Management, and it’s best practice Supplier Relationship Management and data analysis skills, can really help Marketing.

If Supply Management can effectively support each of these phases, then chances are it can effectively support Marketing and get some control over that sacred cow spend.

And if it doesn’t have the processes and tools it needs, there are Agency Lifecycle Management solutions on the market.

For many Supply Management organizations, Marketing is one of the sacred cow spends that they don’t get to touch. This is because Marketing insists that creative talent can’t be traditionally sourced due to the inability to quantify creativity systematically, and can’t be managed using traditional processes because creative talent is not like easily sourced janitorial services.

But this isn’t true. Creative talent can be sourced systematically, but not using a hands-off auction, outsourced GPO, or other inappropriate methodology. It can be effectively sourced using a proper RFX, Supplier Management, and negotiation process. And creative talent can be effectively managed using an Agency Lifecycle Management process that manages the services cradle-to-grave.

So what is Agency Lifecycle Management? It’s Services Lifecycle Management customized for Agency Management. In traditional services lifecycle management, you have the following basic steps:

• supplier identification and selection
• contract and scope of work
• delivery
• review and evaluation

In Agency Lifecycle Management, you have approximately the same steps, except the scope of work can take various forms and be much more involved, and the delivery step requires a lot more interaction than a traditional (services) delivery and usually takes the form of regular interactive briefings. In other words, in Agency Lifecycle Management, you have the steps of:

• selection
  where agencies are identified, their core skills are captured, and the best match(es) are identified;
• scoping
  where the scope of work is collaboratively defined between Procurement, Marketing, and the Agency to meet the needs of the initiatives Marketing has planned;
• briefing
  where the specific requirements of each initiative are captured in a clean and complete manner for the agency to deliver against; and
• evaluation
  where the work effort, cost, and other relative metrics are captured for verification and comparative purposes.

And, most importantly, each step is tailored to the specific needs of the Marketing department where Agency Management is concerned. So what are the specific needs? We’ll address those in Part II.