Leading a major change initiative for one of the UK's leading advertising business
Oaklin led a market and business transformation programme at one of the UK’s leading advertising businesses, an Out of Home (OOH) media owner. Faced with a seismic change in the marketplace, fueled by the growth in digital advertising, the client had to embrace a digital marketplace and diversify its commercial routes to market. Oaklin led the change towards new ways of selling and trading, including a reorganisation of one third of the entire business. Key to the success of this programme was bringing the business along on the journey.
“This is the first time I’ve felt the business has approached changes in a transparent and collaborative way, with the people who will be tasked with implementing these new behaviours day to day.”
Transformation Manager, Global Media Organisation
Case Study
Oaklin was approached by the market leader in Out of Home (OOH) media. Whilst highly successful in the OOH market, with a continuous drive for digitisation, the client’s growth had been constrained to date by increasing pressure from the digital advertising marketplace. Faced with this seismic change in the market, fueled by the growth in digital advertising, the Client engaged Oaklin to help shape its response.
Primarily, the client needed to change the way their business sold its products in order to be more efficient, access new routes to market, deliver new and improved benefits for its customer and advertisers, and better promote OOH media as a tool for increasing brand awareness. High on the requirements list to enable this change was better utlising the increased availability of data-driven insights, increasing their use of automated transactions, and increasing audience based commercial propositions.
Working closely with the client Oaklin shaped and launched the New Ways of Selling and Trading (NWST) programme. The programme included a re-design of the company’s key commercial functions including changes in ways of working, revised simple-to-use product catalogues, and updated commercial frameworks in order to control product sales. Back-office processes, governance frameworks, KPI’s and business insights were also reinvented to better support the business moving forwards.
In addition to implementing the above models, one-third of the business participated in a series of educational workshops run by Oaklin. The objective was to bring the business along on the transformation journey. These sessions increased awareness of why and how the UK commercial processes and offerings were changing, and how this would allow the business to face the opportunity and threat from digital advertising.
As a result of Oaklin’s participation, the feedback from participants across the business was that nearly 100% have a clear understanding of the rationale for NWST, and close to 100% of respondents have a good/very good understanding what these implications mean for them, and how to adapt their ways of working for NWST.
By bringing the business along on the transformation journey the client now has a robust framework for Change Management. This will be used to support an ongoing programme of transformation in 2020 and beyond.
