Adjudicating suppliers
Three proposals, three different answers
Each internally consistent, each pointing at a different investment. The question is not which supplier is best, it is which problem is actually worth solving first.
Newcastle
An independent digital advisor for Newcastle organisations with more than one supplier
Newcastle is not short of digital capability. It has agencies, developers, product people and a genuine technology economy. What it is short of is somebody senior with no stake in the answer, sitting on your side of the table while you decide which of those suppliers to believe.
The Newcastle problem is not the regional problem
Across the wider North East the difficulty is scarcity. Fewer independent advisors, one agency doing everything, nobody internally able to challenge what is delivered.
In Newcastle the difficulty is the opposite. There is plenty of capability and plenty of confident advice, and it does not agree with itself. A city organisation of any size typically has a web agency, a paid media supplier, a development partner, a CRM implementer and a platform vendor, each with a coherent view of what should happen next, each view serving their own scope. Nobody in that group is lying. They are simply all describing the part of the problem they can be paid to fix.
That leaves an executive team adjudicating between five specialists on a subject where they are, reasonably, the least informed people in the conversation. Doing that without an independent read is where large sums quietly go.
Where I am usually called in
Four situations account for most city work, and all four are decisions rather than projects.
Stretched internal teams
A capable digital team with no senior cover
Larger city organisations often have good people two levels down and nobody at board level who owns digital. That gap shows up as competent delivery of the wrong priorities.
Professional services
Firms competing on quality, buying on volume
Newcastle has a dense professional services market. The recurring error is paying for more enquiries when the commercial need is better ones.
AI decisions
Enthusiasm arriving faster than governance
In a city with real technical talent, teams start building with AI before anyone has decided what data may be used, who signs it off and what happens when it is wrong.
Somebody on your side of the table
I ran an agency for two decades, so I know how the proposals are built, where the margin sits and which questions the confident answers are designed to deflect. I now have no delivery arm, no reseller agreements and no platform commissions, which means when I tell you a supplier is doing good work I have no reason to say otherwise.
More often than not that is the finding. A competent supplier being managed badly is the commonest problem I see in the city, and it is cheaper to fix than a change of agency.
In the room, not on a call
Half an hour up the coast means I can be at a board meeting or a supplier review in person, at short notice, without it becoming an expense conversation.
Board-level language
I have sat on an executive board. The output is written for the people who hold the budget, not translated for them afterwards by somebody else.
One person throughout
Whoever you meet does the work. There is no pitch team, no account manager and nobody being introduced later once the contract is signed.
Relevant work
Complex estates, several suppliers, one decision to get right
The city work draws on programme experience rather than regional networks, so this is the proof that matters here.
Central government
41 websites rationalised into one estate
Multiple stakeholders, competing suppliers and an estate nobody wanted to own. The politics were harder than the technology.
Read case studyExecutive board
£40m to more than £80m online in three years
Board membership in a £140m travel business, with accountability for the online commercial result rather than advice about it.
Read case studyProfessional services
182 enquiries to 529, without a rebuild
A regional law firm, eighteen months of phased work on the site it already had. The expensive option was never taken.
Read case studyOn the distance, plainly
Amble to Newcastle is about thirty miles and takes half an hour. I am in the city often, I can be there tomorrow morning if something has gone wrong, and for board meetings and supplier reviews I turn up in person as a matter of course.
What I do not have is a Newcastle office, and I would rather you heard that here than found it out later. A leadership team that discovers the vaguely worded city presence is a house up the coast has learned something unhelpful about the person they were considering, and none of it is about geography.
If you are holding three proposals
Thirty minutes is usually enough for me to tell you which question you are actually trying to answer.
If the suppliers have it right, I will tell you that too.
Book a free 30-minute call