For years, the prevailing wisdom has been to hire a “one-stop shop” for all your creative and technical needs. But instead of getting a one-stop shop, many companies have learned the hard way that what they actually hired was a “jack of all trades and a master of none.” In today’s environment of increasing complexity, many organizations are realizing that choosing specialized partners is an easy way to minimize risk.

“One-stop shops” are well aware of this inconvenient truth– and as the 2020 Digital Outlook Study from Forrester and SoDA clearly demonstrates, traditional agency leaders consider specialist firms their biggest threat.

For enterprise clients, the most popular alternative is a multi-agency approach, with good reason.

#1: Your business benefits from specialized expertise.

With the best from each field, you can deliver a final project that reflects the latest and most innovative practices.

#2: A network of partners gives you more flexibility.

In today’s business environment, the only constant is change. You may decide to bring certain disciplines in house over time, or identify that you need to make a change. In a multi-partner scenario, you can make targeted changes without rocking the boat of risking a relationship you depend on in other areas.

It’s understandable that companies have fallen for the one-stop shop trap in the past. But to understand why it’s a temptation that’s worth avoiding, we’ll start by examining some myths that commonly lead to this decision.

Beware of the jack of all trades.

In day to day conversations, we see three main reasons that companies subscribe to the promise of a one-stop shop. But these reasons don’t always pan out as they hoped.

Myth #1: A single full-service agency ensures cross-discipline cooperation.

In reality, we all know that large agencies form standalone departments that struggle with silos. But because they own the totality of your business – and assume they have you locked in – you’re not giving them a real incentive to align each discipline and work as a team as you would expect them to. Often this leaves clients feeling like “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing.”

On the flip side, when you hire multiple agencies to cooperate on your behalf, you don’t give them the option to take the relationship for granted. Any one of them can be replaced at any time. So specialist agencies must cooperate to survive, and the good ones know that cooperation is one of the most important skills they can master.

Myth #2: Bigger firms are better-resourced.

We can all agree that more people means more time spent communicating to keep everyone in the loop. But do more bodies on the job really mean a faster time to market? All too often, bigger firms mean extra project management hours, team members, and meetings.

Specialist agencies are focused, and tend to value efficiency – after all, the idea is to get more done, with fewer people, faster than others can. This ensures that you’re only paying for what you need, and you’re working with people who are just as excited as you are about wrapping a task up and moving to the next one.

When working with a smaller agency, you’ll also likely work directly with the specialists who are doing your work. As a result, fewer things get lost in translation, and you spend less time in meetings, re-explaining concepts – so more of your budget goes to actually getting things done.

Myth #3: Bigger translates to deeper expertise.

Traditional agencies aren't always equipped with the specific expertise today's projects require. Data privacy laws, ADA accessibility compliance, personalization, user research, AI, and other top concerns require specific expertise. Even if an agency is large, its resources in a specific technical area are still limited.

When technical focus is needed to get a job done, large agencies often subcontract smaller specialist agencies or freelancers and mark up their services. These folks may work at an information disadvantage in such an arrangement because they’re a step removed from you and your needs. By forming a direct relationship, you can save yourself the markup and get a better outcome.

Specialized agencies handle focused work for numerous clients in different scenarios day in and day out, giving you the depth of expertise your projects require.

All that being said, some still fear the multi-agency approach, so to give both options honest consideration, let’s take a moment to address these hesitations head-on.

Are there risks to hiring multiple agencies?

For all the benefits a dual-agency approach offers, it’s not without its risks. You can’t just slap two digital agencies together and hope that things work out. For your project to succeed, you have to be intentional about who you choose. Your agencies must share a similar set of values and process, and be committed to a harmonious partnership.

You’ll also want to avoid any potential conflict of interest between your two agencies. For example, if you’ve hired a dev shop that dabbles in design, and you’ve also hired a design firm that dabbles in development, either agency might be interested in taking business from the other, creating friction and finger-pointing.

It’s better to find two organizations that are purely specialists and solely focused on doing their kind of work – without a conflict of interest – so there’s no incentive to try to throw the other agency under the bus.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that a one-stop shop doesn’t have a conflict of interest. A one-stop shop inherently has a conflict of interest for two possible reasons:

1. Their design work may be limited to or biased by the technology that they prefer and specialize in – versus the technology that may be the best choice for you; or

2. When they control both design and development, there’s a temptation to create more billable work for themselves. They may design things in a way that is less efficient, but produces the most billable work possible, which benefits their bottom line – not yours.

How to find your best agency partners

So how do you ensure you’re choosing the right parties to team up? The great news is the odds are in your favor here. If two agencies appeal to you because they share similar values and processes with your internal team, it’s likely they’re going to mesh well with each other.

However, you want to make sure. To evaluate agency compatibility, you have three things to look for: 

• A shared value system

• A compatible process

• No conflict of interest

Here are the questions to ask.

1. Do your partners share the same values?

This one’s easy, as you can glean most of it from a quick review of an agency’s website. What do they say about themselves? How do they portray and position themselves? What kind of values do they have?

Make sure that the values you’re looking for in an partner are expressed directly and consistently on their website and are a part of the presentations that they deliver when you’re on the phone. For example, if putting the customers’ needs first is a value that is really important to you as a customer, then you should see that value stated on their website and you should hear that when you’re on the phone with their team on a sales call.

2. Do your partners have a compatible process?

You’re going to learn a lot about an agency’s process on the phone, but any partnership between two agencies is going to have to involve a meshing or modification of their individual processes. So, while it’s important that each agency has a well-thought-out process, it’s more important that they be flexible and willing to adapt their process to create a seamless handoff between the two partners. 

Do they seem to be collaborative and eager to find a seamless end-to-end process that serves your best interest as the customer?

To feel like one seamless team, the development partner needs to be included in key functions of the strategy and design – providing input on wireframes and designs and any decisions that may affect technology selection. An ideal design partner will schedule in collaboration time with the technology partner before sharing work with the client. This allows both teams to raise concerns and fix them without wasting your time with ideas that won’t work.

3. Is there a conflict of interest between your partners?

This should be immediately obvious based on the services that an agency advertises on their website and the way that they position themselves. If an agency positions themselves as a digital transformation agency, they’re a “jack-of-all-trades”, and it may be difficult to pair them up with a specialist of your choice because they may want to take all of your business so they may not play nicely. 

What you’re looking for are partners who clearly have a specific focus, whether that be design, development, social media, SEO, or something else. This is going to be where you find the experts that are going to bring you the most value because they are the ones who are doing this specific type of work, day in and day out. 

Let’s say you are going to hire a lawyer to help ensure you’re compliant with data privacy laws. Are you going to hire a regular business attorney that may have been to some workshops and helped a couple of clients with GDPR contracts at some point, or are you going to hire a data privacy lawyer who does this work day in and day out? The specialist is not only going to draft contracts in a fraction of the time, but they’re also going to raise topics and protect you against liabilities that your regular business attorney wouldn’t even conceive of.

Making your next project a success

With specialized agencies, you stand the greatest chance of getting the best partners for your specific needs. Make sure there is social proof that they’re good at what they do. The partners you select should have numerous reviews and are highly rated by Clutch.co, like Slide UX and Engagency

Interested in how we can collaborate on your next project? Contact us.

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