World’s #1 Soft Drink Company | integrate and reposition diverse creative/business services team to enable more integrated, strategic approach

scenario:

We consulted with the director of this company’s creative business solutions team. The team included creative, video production, event management and travel services – primarily in support of company events and B2B communications. In conducting our on- site evaluation, we discovered the creative and production teams (our mandated focus) had several challenges including:

  • viewed as “transactional” or “service providers” rather than strategic, value-add – organization
  • overall lack of awareness of teams’ services within company
  • hit or miss level of client satisfaction
  • organic team structure (silos), each with their own informal processes
  • unclear roles, titles, and responsibilities at team and individual level
  • on-site creative and video production vendor that duplicated some services and caused confusion for clients – vendor vs. internal team
  • inconsistent use of chargeback system, with some teams charging back and others not

actions taken:

Cohen Miller conducted a comprehensive two-week interview process with key team members and clients around the company and a diagnostic of their current organizational and operational systems. We made several recommendations including, but not limited to:

  • new hybrid business model with mix of clearly defined internal and external resources
  • new organizational structure with:
    • - integrated team with areas of expertise (centers of excellence)
    • - addition of a new centralized group focused on overall operations
    • - relationship managers, to act as point of contact for all requestors and properly assign work to internal and external resources
  • a customized tiering strategy that unified goals and priorities across different lines of business
  • implementation of a unified operations management technology that enables sharing of information and visibility across centers of excellence

outcome:

One year after our consultation, the department achieved the following results:

  • exceeded their revenue goal by 6.1%
  • increased percentage of larger, more strategic projects
  • reduced overall percentage of smaller templated projects
  • drove increase in revenue to one group within the department by 28%, largely due to our recommendations around relationship management
  • obtained senior management support for the addition of some positions and restructuring of overall team
  • successfully implemented new project management system with new metrics and goals set for the upcoming year