Management and Market Research for Digital Initiatives
About this Report
This report explores the performance of Sitecore Integration Partners across a variety of efficiency, value, and profitability metrics in order to establish and study organizational and market benchmarks of operational excellence (OE).
Participants in this study will receive a portfolio performance assessment and a comparison of their own OE measures against that of the industry as a whole.[1]
A general, non-personalized version of this market research report will be available to all non-participants, industry professionals, and the general public upon completion.
[1] Industry performance will be based on the sample set of participants in this study
Industry Need
Web agencies live and die by the profitability of their projects, but in the evolving and increasingly competitive market of mid-to-large scale Sitecore redesigns, marginal profitability is no longer sufficient for success or even survival.
Rising costs and downward price pressure emphasize the importance of not only creating competitive differentiators and diversifying revenue streams, but also continuous enhancements to operational excellence.
Failure to perform routine assessments of organizational performance over time and relative to the market will leave agencies unaware of their trending operational strengths and weaknesses or how and when to respond. Meanwhile, those organizations that remain vigilant to OE metrics will be positioned to exploit strategic opportunities and respond to threats before competitors know they exist.
This report establishes the OE performance benchmarks for the Sitecore Implementation Partner market segment. In it, participating Sitecore Partners will be provided with an assessment of their own performance over a set period of time (2014 & 2015) and relative to the rest of their market peers.
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Core Metrics
This report will focus on the collection and statistical analysis of a number of quantitative performance and OE measures. At minimum, we will focus on the following areas:
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Project Profitability
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Hours Logged vs. Hours Billed
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Project Revenues vs. Project Costs
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Hourly Rates
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Average blended rates
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Rates per resource types/functions
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Project Durations
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# Weeks between first and last time logs
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# Weeks per phase (e.g., design phase vs. development phase)
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Project Volume
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New projects started
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Projects completed
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Team Sizes
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# unique resource types/functions
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# unique individuals
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Overhead Ratios
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Administration hours vs. total hours
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Non-billable vs. billable hours
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Administration, Meetings, Project Management, Documentation Hours vs. Total Hours
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Defects, Rework Ratios
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QA + Bug Fixing vs total hours
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QA + Bug Fixing vs total development hours
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Service Trends
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Distribution of total project time across different service categories
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Activity Trends
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Distribution of total project time across different types of activities
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Multivariate Analysis
Most measures will be evaluated not only for their own raw statistical significance, but also relative to other measures, project attributes, and agency attributes to help identify key relationships with the strongest correlations to each other and overall profitability.
Dates
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Pre-Registration: April 1 - 30, 2016
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Full Registration: May 1 - 31, 2016
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Main Research Study: June 1 - September 30, 2016
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Reports Published: Beginning September 6th, 2016
FAQs
1) How does this process work?
Once registered, one of our analysts will set up a brief call with your team to introduce you to the process and collect preliminary information about your organization, operational models, and the systems used for data capture, collection, and reporting.
Following this initial meeting, the analyst will work with your team to assess the quality, format, and accessibility of the underlying data that will be needed and will work with your team to ensure the data is usable. If so, they will collect the data and prepare it for further processing and analysis by our data science team.
The statistical analysis of your organization will be finalized once all the performance data for all other research participants has been processed. At this point, your organization’s metrics will be compared against the total population of participants and each organization’s reports will be finalized and delivered.
2) Does it matter how we store our data?
We can work with any system that allows for direct data access or that has robust data export or duplication functionality. During our initial evaluation we will determine whether or not the data can be used as-is, if additional data clean up and normalization will be required, or if any other remediation activities will be needed.
Assuming the data is usable as-is or with reasonable levels of clean-up, our team will work to import a sanitized version of your data into our own data centers for further analysis and processing.
3) What data and information will be collected?
We collect only that data that is necessary to statistically assess the data metrics in question for this report. Any superfluous data will be ignored or discarded before it is imported into our data centers for processing.
Some clients may wish to use this opportunity to have Rapid Catalyst evaluate other dimensions of their data. In these cases, we may collect and report on supplemental data sets for those organizations as an add-on service and upon request.
4) How will the data be used?
Rapid Catalyst will use the data collected from research participants to run statistical assessments and other business intelligence models for the sake of this report. Afterwards, this data may be further analyzed and used to develop additional insights, reports, graphics, whitepapers, and other information or guidance that may be used for commercial purposes.
Rapid Catalyst will not share any organizationally identifiable data with 3rd parties or customers without explicit prior written consent.
5) What is the performance period being evaluated?
In this report, we will evaluate performance data for the period from January 1st, 2014 through December 31st, 2015.
Some participants may wish to use this opportunity to evaluate a more comprehensive performance period. In these cases, our analysts will work with your team to determine the best method for collecting and reporting on the additional data as an additional add-on service.
6) How long does the process usually take?
Typically between 2-5 weeks, depending on the quality, consistency, and accessibility of the underlying data and systems of record.
7) Why only Sitecore Partners?
The web industry is a vast landscape of competitors with various specialties, capabilities, resources, and market niches. The Sitecore Implementation partner network is a community of relatively well-established organizations that, by the nature of their partnership status, have already pre-qualified themselves as stable organizations that compete for similar types of projects and customers.
If your organization is not currently qualified as a Sitecore partner, but would like to be considered for inclusion as part of this study or future studies, please use the registration form included here and someone will contact you to determine the best course forward.
NOTE: Any non-Sitecore partners that receive a performance analysis as part of this market intelligence report will be compared against the other Sitecore Partners agencies in this study, but their organizational performance data will not be included as part of the overall market performance statistics against which all other organizations will be benchmarked.