How to Explain Admin Access To Client Who Denies It to Anyone Inside or Outside?

[jessential]

Hi ,

I am on a new project for a great prospective client. After a company split the IT dept says, "Our IT Infrastructure team doesn’t provide admin access to anyone (internal or external) to any of our servers/sites for security, maintainability, and quality reasons.   We would be more than happy to install and configure any software you would like and provide you read access to any output you might need."

I am not aware of any such software. Or what help "read only access" is to getting tasks accomplished. Tomorrow am I meet with four others on the project that I am to assign SEO tasks to. Everyone wonders how to accomplish marketing tasks, web redesign and SEO tasks efficiently? They are told to drop by new content on a backupn CD.

My contact has asked that I am permitted access... what can one do when IT says "no?"

[RepLoc_Tim]

Nice work!  It's always great to hear success stories and gives us a little more inspiration to keep up the communication until we get what we want;-)

[jessential]

For a quick follow -up. After several meetings, I have been able to explain my efforts and how it will  move their project forward. We seem to have built a new level of trust and the admin access has been granted. Lots of extra hours to get here, though. Thanks for all of your great advice.

[jessential]

Thanks! All your thoughts prepared me for a meeting with the business owner today and the head of IT.  They have determined to set up a Dev site and give me access to it. Then they will move updates to the live site. Has anyone worked this way? Tips on how to best manage it?

[RepLoc_Tim]

Wow, that is really a bad situation and sounds like you are going to be very limited.  When I mentioned limitation, I was referring to things such as Google Analytics Admin.  Some of the platform sites have their Google Analytics account Admin, but will not give Admin and GWMT access to 3rd parties (marketing agencies).   They package in Analytics with their platform monthly rates and set Analytics to mail a report to the client each month.  I have had developers refuse to add a video sitemap.  I have had some that gave me access to their site backend, but it was hosted on an IIS server and required them to do the manual 301 redirects, and they refused to do this.  These are just a few examples of "limitations" I have seen.

Having said that, I really feel your pain here.  In your initial question, you called this a "great prospective client," but it is not a great situation as there seems to be a bad breakup with residual bad internal politics.  Without knowing your entire situation, here are my recommendations based on what you have mentioned so far:

Option 1 is to not accept the project as it might be too draining and time consuming because of the company politics.

Option 2 is to start by placing proper expectations with the person hiring you - sounds like you have established a good relationship with them.  You have to let them know how important on-site optimization is and how the IT dept seem to be unreasonable.  Without onsite optimization, your entire campaign is going to be inefficient - it will take a ton more work offsite in order to get results and it is not ideal.  Even blogging sounds like a serious pain in that it has to go to a test server first, then you have to wait for an IT person who doesn't "get it" to approve.  You should also consider raising your rates because of the situation.  This is not typical, so your typical rates that you may have quoted may no longer apply now that you know the whole story.

Anyway, good luck with this. I hope it works.  I would love to hear how it plays out.

[jessential]

It is good to learn that some of you work in this manners as my experience has been largely with having full admin access.  Tim, what "are some limitations" you have found this way?

I have offered to train those with access by walking them through what they need to do verbally, including meeting with them initially in person as needed to ensure they understand how to complete the steps successfully. However, as I understand it after this new three-way company split, all the higher level and "cutting edge" IT are gone. The remaining staff is working hard to learn those positions and has no or little bandwidth for such training.

They use one path for all internal and external help who blog, add photos, redesign pages or any form of updates: all are done on a test site till approved by the IT staff, then placed on a CD, driven or mailed  to their physical address, and IT uploads the new content into a "rolled back" version of Joomla (Joomla-253-released.html).

Therefore, unfortunately, I will be unable to use schema metadata, just one downside.

They seem unsure of time or budget for follow-up communication or documentation from IT. As I understand this is where the "installing software to give me read only access" is meant to give "output". I can audit already through many SEOmoz and other tools. Is there such a software? Would it work as a communicative documentation of completed tasks?

I agree with your "just work through it" and "no point in doing all the work". My concern is the project manager/my contact's take that IT in this case is like an "unnecessary barricade" and is asking me to proceed by way of "software solution discussions". They seem to be seeing SEO  conclusively as something similar to a WordPress Yoast install for an old Joomla platform.

How do you suggest building trust with a "barricaded team"? They seem worn and now face competing with their former peers/lead staff who are all well ahead according to Site Explorer's comparison tools.

[RepLoc_Tim]

Yes, as Cesar stated, this is not uncommon, and you can push the tasks to them.  Over half of our clients' sites are on platform based sites and their developers do not give us access.  While there are some limitations, we provide them with a nice zip file with paint by numbers documentation of what we need them to do.

Just put together your strategy exactly the way you would if you were going in there to do it yourself.  Spell each item out so that it cannot be misinterpreted.  I always include a READ ME FIRST file that explains the content of the zip folder.  Once you send the file, schedule at time to verbally go over it and confirm that they completely understand your instructions for them.  A lot of the times, you will get a grumpy response as they just don't get why these things are so important to you.  Just work through it.  Find out what they may not be able to do and problem solve to find the work-around.  Have them send you documentation once they have completed the tasks.  Do an audit and make sure everything meets your satisfaction.  Keep the paper trail (email trail) of everything saved, just in case...

[cbielich]

Are you referring to making edits to their website for SEO purposes?

If so most companies will outline in a Doc what they need to do and you leave it up to them to get those tasks done.

No point in doing all the work