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Hastings Hart (510) 457-5383 Home Services Case Studies Testimonials LinkedIn For a marketing agency's statements of work, I set the standard for quality. 
Clear Ink grew rapidly, and suddenly it was churning out statements of work (mini-proposals) faster than ever, and more account executives were writing them. The need for speed and the greater number of cooks in the kitchen led to inconsistent quality, and clients were complaining. I interviewed about a dozen people and reviewed about 25 statements of work that had been sent to clients. I analyzed everyone’s stated needs, and I determined which needs conflicted (for example, clients needed statements of work to be fast, but project managers needed them to be comprehensive). I wrote a report of analysis and recommendations listing the stakeholders and describing their needs. I identified 13 problems and grouped them into four categories for easy comprehension, and I made 15 concrete recommendations, nearly all of which were accepted. My client told me that the report was extremely helpful because its rigorous analysis and independent perspective helped take a lot of the emotion out of internal discussions about the process. Underlying all my recommendations was a vision for quality that I learned as an editor at a daily newspaper. I took many elements of professional publishing workflows that I learned there, such as multiple levels of reviews even in the face of crushing deadlines, and adapted them to an agency environment. At Clear Ink, I succeeded. I saw this for myself since I edited all statements of work for many months afterwards, and Clear Ink’s most important client specifically mentioned how much happier they were with statements of work. For this project, I also implemented a publishing infrastructure that hard-wired this level of quality into the process, which you can read about here. |