Hope to see you at our roundtable
At the upcoming Procurecon Marketing conference in Phoenix, Alliansis will be hosting a roundtable looking at the topic of scope of work best practice.
5pm Monday and as added fun enjoy the “bucket of beers”.
We would love you to join us, and to help the conversation flow, we’ve listed below ten topics for possible discussion during the roundtable. Have a review and see which ones appeal to you. We’d love to hear from you during this sharing session.
Thought-starters: 10 Topics For Disussion
Objectives and outcomes first. Tie the scope to business and marketing objectives before listing any activity, so the agency understands the “why” and success is defined up front.
Question: “Could your agency explain what success looks like for this scope without reading the SOW?”
Defining deliverables precisely. Set the level of detail for each deliverable: formats, versions, channels, markets and adaptations. Also state inclusions, exclusions, and assumptions explicitly.
Question: “What’s the most expensive issue you’ve had in a deliverable description not providing enough detail?”
Rate cards and resourcing. Cover role definitions, seniority mix, blended versus role-specific rates, benchmarking, and how often rates are reviewed. Include offshore or nearshore resourcing.
Question: “Do you buy hours, or do you buy outputs, or both, and do your rate cards reflect that?”
Remuneration models. Compare retainer, project fee, output-based (deliverable pricing) and performance or value-based incentives, and when each suits the type of work.
Question: “Which model is appropriate for the work in the SOW you want from your agencies?”
Approval workflow and governance. Agree who briefs, who reviews and who signs off. Set the number of revision rounds, the turnaround times, and the escalation paths. A RACI is useful here, especially across multiple agencies.
Question: “What bottlenecks do you find are caused by your own approval process?”
Change control and scope creep. Set a formal change-request process, value thresholds for re-approval, and rules for handling out-of-scope requests without slowing the work down.
Question: “Where’s the line between ‘flexibility’ and ‘free work’?”
Third-party costs and production. Cover pass-through costs, markups and handling fees, media, and the split between production and creative scope.
Question: “Do you have visibility of what sits underneath the agency’s production line?”
IP, usage rights and AI. Address ownership of work, talent and music usage terms, buyouts, and rules for using AI-generated content and tools in delivery. This includes whether AI-driven efficiencies are reflected in fees.
Question: “If AI halves the time to produce an asset, who should get the benefit?”
Agency performance evaluation. Use KPIs within the scope, agency scorecards and two-way evaluations (the client’s performance as well as the agency’s), and link the results to commercial outcomes.
Question: “Is your agency evaluation connected to the things that marketing and the agency actually cares about?”
Planning cycles and reconciliation. Align annual scoping with marketing planning, run quarterly true-ups, track hours or outputs against the SOW, and agree in advance how under- or over-delivery is resolved.
Question: “Did you reconcile each quarter to see how the burn-rate is tracking, and what did you find?”