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Summary
During our May 28 community videoconference, we provided a live interactive preview of some "in development" material from the upcoming EX2020 virtual conference. We had two speakers from one of our themes trying out their talks, with provocations and reactions from the Enterprise Experience community. Melinda Belcher, who heads up the Content Design practice at Mastercard's Tech Hub in New York City, described what it's like to "boomerang" from in-house, to agency, and back again, with all the cultural and operational aspects. Sol Mesz, co-founder and Product Strategy Director at Kambrica, one of the leading UX consultancies in Argentina, offered advice on how to hire the right UX consultant for enterprise projects.
Key Insights
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Agencies operate on short-term project timelines while enterprises often focus on long-term work that can last years.
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Agency work rarely includes direct feedback or insight into the long-term impact of their deliverables.
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Mature internal enterprise teams require less education and hand-holding than less mature ones when working with agencies.
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The best consultants are partners focused on business outcomes rather than just project execution.
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Flexibility is essential from both consultants and enterprises to blend different cultures, tools, and skills effectively.
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Consultants often help enterprises evangelize and justify work internally, handling political and stakeholder challenges.
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Hiring cheaper agencies can lead to hidden costs like rework, lower quality, and extended timelines.
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Using internal enterprise tools and gaining access to them is crucial for consultants integrating into enterprise teams.
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COVID-19 has pressured the traditional insider-outsider dynamic by accelerating remote work and virtual collaboration.
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Consultants’ fresh perspective helps internal teams ask new questions and push boundaries that insiders may overlook.
Notable Quotes
"In agencies, you are deployed on projects with finite timelines that can end quickly, whereas in enterprise, people might be doing the same work for five, ten, or fifteen years."
"A lot of the reasons why we bring agencies in is to evangelize and help us tell our story."
"The agencies don’t often know what happens to their work after they deliver it unless they hear about it third hand years later."
"You hire a consultant for partnership, not just to execute — you want someone thinking in terms of business results, not just projects."
"If you hire by portfolio visual impact, industry experience, and price alone, you’re probably making the wrong choice."
"Flexibility goes both ways: consultants must adapt to the client’s way, but clients must allow consultants to bring new approaches."
"Sometimes we hire agencies to take on accountability that we internally can’t manage, so their failure is ours too."
"Enterprise work is never done — you ship something, then come back to fix and improve it."
"Consultants can do things insiders can’t because they have more liberty to ask awkward questions and push boundaries."
"During COVID-19, the insider-outsider dynamic is radically shifting as many outsiders now work from home."
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