Agency Technology – Are You Thinking Website or Business Platform?
Simon Erskine Locke , Founder & CEO of CommunicationsMatchTM “We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don't let yourself be lulled into inaction.” Bill GatesAgencies are making significant investments in technologies, yet many remain stuck in the paradigm of thinking about websites rather than business platforms. 
Most firms build (or rebuild) websites and then buy or integrate third-party applications to provide the functionality a modern agency needs. But as anyone who has used technology-driven marketing tools will know, integration, usability, and cost are often an issue.There’s a reason why certification around the more sophisticated platforms may be needed to get the most from them – they are complex. As someone who has tried more than a few, there are generally more dead ends than hallelujahs.What we really need are simple to use, fit-for-purpose technology platforms in which content management, client relationship management, enterprise resource management, email marketing tools, and digital metrics are built in.The good news here is, as with the order of magnitude drop in development costs that powered the growth of technology startups over the last decade, the cost to build ground-up “business platforms” with these capabilities has declined to the point where this is now in the reach of smaller agencies and even individual professionals.With growing accessibility, agencies and professionals in the communications and marketing world now have new options to create technology customized for their needs. 
Our new development partnership with RexSoft, to provide technology development and support services to the communications and marketing industry, is built around this evolution.By leveraging code it has built, RexSoft has developed RXCore™ CMS, CRM, and ERP technology modules which can be incorporated into website builds at relatively low cost. This creates new opportunities to build technology with simpler interfaces, greater flexibility and control, along with the potential for long-term cost savings versus integrating multiple third-party applications.Anyone who has gone down the path of building on platforms such as WordPress will know the tradeoffs versus an optimal ground-up build. Affordable technology that offers both customization and seamless integration is a significant step forward for agencies and professionals.In fact, this will be a game changer.The democratization of the ability to build and evolve technology around individual business models that is not subject to the limitations of third-party platforms will encourage creative ways of thinking about its use to engage with and market to clients.We should not overstate the changes that this will lead to over the next two years. But consistent with Bill Gates’ maxim on change, over the next decade it will underpin changes for agencies and professionals in the industry that are hard to imagine today.
About the Author: Simon Erskine Locke is the founder & CEO of CommunicationsMatchTM . CommunicationsMatch offers communications & PR agency search tools and resources that help companies find, shortlist, and engage communications, digital marketing and branding agencies, consultants and freelancers by industry and communications expertise, location and size. Prior to founding CommunicationsMatch, Locke held senior corporate communications roles at Prudential Financial, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank and founded communications consultancies.
