Partnering conversations generally start with a vision; a closely coupled relationship that shares an operating philosophy free from the artificial barriers of ego and bureaucracy. Effective partnering enriches the working environment through purpose and promotes positive team behaviours. The net result is greater value, faster.

I have often talked about the dangerously thin veneer that larger agencies present to clients by spruiking a breadth of capability. SEO? Sure. Mobile? Yes. Web design and development? Absolutely. Salesforce integration? You bet. And we’ll run your campaigns too!

The post-Covid shakedown of organisations still debating their own historic lethargy around digitisation continues to create an either / or sub-market for digital services and agencies. As businesses embrace digital the increasing complexity of digital service provision means that agencies need to be much clearer on what they do well and how they do it.

The IPN is a deliberate decision to celebrate expertise, driven by a changing perspective in the value of digital. It perhaps more fairly acknowledges our laser focus on the Client Experience as one of our key pillars. In-house digital teams have become a prioritised investment as a result of 2020. It’s just not acceptable to lose these newly baptised team members in a buoyant talent market because they were left exposed by a delivery experience that sucked.

Across professional services, those organisations whose narrative and alignment during this traumatic period is defined by mature delivery frameworks, settled IP, uplifting people and culture practices and clarity around technology choices has seen them gently bubble to the surface. Sadly, one-stop-shop agencies promising to be all things to all people are beginning to circle the plughole.

Where these one-stop-shop service providers used to enjoy the trust of budget holders in either the CMO or the CTO, depending upon the organisational bias towards the role of digital, in-house digital specialists like Chief Digital Officers and Digital Product Owners are emerging as critical digital decision makers. It’s a pre-Covid trend that the pandemic has accelerated. And they’re operating with more sophistication.

The people in these roles know that in order to influence a specific metric, on a particular device, using a specific feature, they will need to promote a single piece of data from a particular system, that’s integrated with their CRM in a specific way. And with that increased institutional confidence comes a willingness to draw upon smaller service partners whose deeper domain expertise solves for a specific need confidently.

Driving a performant network needs willing and committed leadership around which collaboration, arbitration and trust can rally otherwise relationships fracture and the value to all parties erodes quickly. And this is where Inlight can really make a difference, driven by our values and a culture.

It is a real pleasure to launch this initiative with Optimising who are Google Premier Partners. Optimising uses SEO, paid or social ads to make online brands stand out. And WhyHive, who provides data science and business intelligence overlay so that we can focus on using data to drive better performance. We'll be publishing partner profiles in the coming weeks.

Our promise to IPN members and to our collective client base is that Inlight will make itself accountable for establishing, promoting and then celebrating the IPN’s range of deep domain expertise.