At the Eloqua Experience conference last October, Eloqua Corp announced its new “Eloqua Expert Services” – offering up their internal specialists on a for-hire basis to do everything and anything their clients need done with Eloqua.
The announcement was greeted with mixed reactions by the Eloqua community. At least a few Eloqua customers seem to have signed up for this service, while others are taking a “wait and see” approach.
The new service marks a considerable change in strategy for Eloqua Corp around service delivery. They have long operated an in-house professional services department, but in the past sought to promote their Eloqua Partner community for any service work. The in-house team would limit their engagements to fixed-price projects such as deployment, lead scoring programs or “best practices consulting” audits. Customers who needed on-going campaign and development work would be referred to their partner ecosystem. By referring the bulk of service work to partners, Eloqua Corp could focus their staff on what they do best – building a solid product.
This new service now seems to indicate a reversal in policy. Eloqua Corp is now positioning to offer “one-stop shopping” for clients who need a complete array of services – deployment, training, development, integration, campaign admin, ad-hoc tech support, best practice consulting.
Curious to hear from Eloqua community members who have actually hired their services or otherwise have an opinion to share.
– Where do they pitch in? Tech support only, or do you delegate entire campaigns or programs?
– Do you only task to them on overflow, when you are “overloaded” or do they have steady work from you?
– How many hours?
– Pros and cons?
– Do you think the service will change the way you staff Eloqua in your company?
BRIM Consulting 
Hi Ken,
Thanks for the thoughts about our new Eloqua Expert program. And thanks for being such an active member of our community, on- and off-line. It's always great to see you.
I wanted to weigh in with some perspective on our vision for Eloqua Expert. The first item is the origin of the program. We created it in response to customer requests. Our customers asked if we would provide direct support to help them with their Eloqua aspirations and ongoing programs. Our goal has always been the same — we want to help our customers get more out of their investment and drive more revenue. We thought an “expert” group within Eloqua would be a way to meet customer needs and reinforce our larger message — we help drive your success, both for the individual marketer and business.
As it relates to partners, Eloqua Expert isn't meant to solve all needs or act as a full outsourced solution. There is absolutely still a significant role for our partner network. Eloqua Expert is focused around helping our customers become better marketers and by helping them learn to do more themselves (teach them to fish and sometimes fish for them).
Thanks again for caring enough to post. I hope this comment helps clarify our vision for the service.
-Joe Chernov, VP of Content Marketing, Eloqua
Joe, thanks for opening discussion on this topic. It's certainly good for Eloqua's customers to have viable and differentiated choices on how they staff the platform. It should be interesting for everyone in the community to see if the new service can effectively meet the array of needs that clients have, how well it scales, and what types of projects are suitable for a company to in-source versus hire an Eloqua Expert versus outsource to a service partner. I'm eager to get a sense of ideas and opinions from the community at large.