Your first impression may be that internal teams are always better, but the truth of the matter is that leveraging or integrating with an external agency has massive benefits that enable you to get the most out of your internal team. Here are 5 key points of how an external agency can help boost you in your career.
Fresh Perspective
Regardless of if your company is big or small, after a certain period of time your designers and developers get comfortable and used to a specific routine of how to execute things. With an external team, you get a breadth of new ideas and new thoughts. So what’s the difference between bringing in new employees and bringing in an external agency to get a fresh perspective? Well, I’m glad you asked. A new employee typically isn’t gauged based on their ability to have a fresh perspective for the long run. In comparison, that is the unique value prop for an agency to get in the door. An agency has to win you over by showing the capability to think differently and drive change and big picture thinking on a consistent basis. Having the right agency in place actually empowers and can push your internal team to new standards.
Integration & Processes
A lot of companies have processes that work great and their project managers thinking that their project went flawless, but for most, shipping products is a grind, timelines constantly slip, processes aren’t followed and team morale is low due to too many meetings. By leveraging or having your internal team work alongside an external agency you can gain insights into how to effectively ship products. Proven agencies are not only able to leverage their own processes if needed, but they are also able to help guide and navigate your team with a better understanding of potential challenges or roadblocks in your processes.
Agility
A lot of companies have processes that work great and their project managers thinking that their project went flawless, but for most, shipping products is a grind, timelines constantly slip, processes aren’t followed and team morale is low due to too many meetings. By leveraging or having your internal team work alongside an external agency you can gain insights into how to effectively ship products. Proven agencies are not only able to leverage their own processes if needed, but they are also able to help guide and navigate your team with a better understanding of potential challenges or roadblocks in your processes.
Breaking through the Red Tape
One of the greatest benefits of leveraging an external agency is that they generally are treated as an external contact (even if they are fully integrated with your team). What does that mean? Well, agencies are able to go in and act a bit naive, they are able to step on toes and with good intent break down some siloes to really drive to the root of a problem. This external approach helps break a lot of the red tape that internal teams are challenged with and generally puts the power back into the internals' team tool belt.
Forward Thinking
Agencies live and die based on their customer base. Therefore it’s an agency's intent to always push the boundaries and be thinking about what's next. Getting big-picture understanding helps agencies effectively navigate how they can continue to keep you relevant and pushing forward. Whether it’s feature enhancements to new products an agency is going to always be thinking in a critical manner of how they help better your business which helps make you look like a rockstar.
