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Gian has significant experience working on large, international accounts covering multiple industries. Naturally process driven, he ensures all members of the team are always aligned, keeping momentum throughout his delivery. All whilst being able to rise out of the detail and see the bigger picture.
I’ve spent some time over the past few weeks (we seem to have had time for reflecting in abundance recently) thinking about my role and understanding what it is that I do.
I’ve worked customer/client facing for over a decade and it’s clear that this is where my strengths lie.
I’ve now been with Nzime for over a year so thought I’d drop some info on the daily goings-on and what it is that my job role leads to.
There should be someone out there who finds this interesting.
Keeping momentum
My main responsibility is to keep a steady flow of work coming into the studio. This needs a great deal of forward planning to keep things in progress with all my clients.
Be it in a monthly retainer, or project by project basis, to keep this momentum I need to get a handle on pipeline goals and the projects that will get us there.
Understanding what the client wants to achieve and when they want to achieve it is all I need to get the wheels in motion.
I then pull in various departments of the business to add their insight to make sure we are always delivering the best - that’s discovery, strategy, design, development and evaluation.
From this initial brief, I am then accountable in making sure that all resources are booked in to deliver the project.
Proposal writing was something I had very little experience of before Nzime. Safe to say I’ve written my fair share in the past 15 months. These could be a top level one-pager or a more indepth document covering the brief, approach, commercials and timelines.
Granted not all of them come to see the light, but sitting on a bank of proposals is good for future idea generation too...
Becoming part of the clients team
The more you understand your clients’ business, the easier it is for you to run their account. The day-to-day management should become second nature with general site maintenance and updates being the bread and butter of your workload. Knowing their business needs helps you unlock future projects, and identify any blockers to get you there.
I think of myself as an extension to the clients team, adding value where I can to strengthen the relationship - and ultimately the business.
Get stuck into annual pipeline conversations, make yourself aware of changes within the business and search for news and updates within each industry market.
Combine that with audience research and understanding how and why they interact with digital ecosystems puts you in a stronger position.
The Importance of Good Comms
Communication is a golden word for me. Keeping conversations open, honest and up to date are vital to maintaining a successful relationship. We have plenty of channels to choose from so find the right one to suit the subject and pass on the info.
At Nzime we use Monday.com as our master hub, with Slack and emails as support.
Helping the studio
By having all the relevant info within one place, the studio has a clear understanding of what the task is - and can then fully identify the deliverables from each task.
Regularly tracking the progress (be it digitally or on weekly status updates) means we can foresee any blockers in time to react and not affect the deadline.
Wider thoughts
The digital world is ever changing - so as a business we need to be reactive. For me personally this means being on the hunt for new technologies being developed.
Once I find something of interest, I think of how I could relate that to various clients and the marketing strategies we have in place with them.
To summarise
In a nutshell, I spend a lot of my time talking, planning and getting excited, then handing over to our designers and developers to action.