There are two spectrums in the monitoring and evaluation industry, both of which can be great options, depending on the objectives of a specified communication action or outreach.

These are reporting services and external monitoring tools (aka ‘platforms.’) Let’s break down what they are and look at their advantages and disadvantages.

Reporting Services

What are reporting services?

Reporting services are when you hire an external communication agency that can use a myriad of relevant tools and methodologies to address the specific question(s) posed by you, the client organization.

Questions usually fall into three categories: your organization’s reputation, the reputation of a product or concept credited to your organization (e.g. a specific program or report), or the overall relevant opinions and influencers for a specific issue in a certain region or linguistic group essential to your organization.

What are the advantages of reporting services?

Reporting-specialized agencies have the necessary infrastructure to complete detailed reports quickly and more accurately than can usually be done in-house, saving the time/money required to develop and maintain the same infrastructure internally. Plus, many of these agencies specialize in a particular type of reporting, so they tend to contain a lot of in-house knowledge that you can’t easily find elsewhere.

What are the disadvantages of…