HOME > WHY CHOOSE ORDISH? > CASE STUDIES

Case studies: Some recent projects

Having worked on a wide range of issues with businesses of all sizes, Ordish Marketing has the expertise to bring a powerful blend of strategic thinking and marketing know-how to every project. Here are some examples of the work we’ve done:

Delivering stretch-target revenue growth

Strategic planning in a complex situation

Challenge: The UK consumer division of a global telco had been set a stretch revenue target of £2.4bn. This target relied on customers increasing their use of “data” services on their phones.

A new set of phones, combining calls with music and entertainment services, was crucial to driving data usage but customer take-up of the new offering was low.

Response: Ordish organised an intensive, 3-day structured planning session with representatives from five different functional areas of the business, including strategy, customer management, marketing, sales and technology. Drawing on the expertise and knowledge of the 15-member team, we carried out a broad situation analysis and identified some known and some hitherto unknown root-cause issues: lack of differentiation; conflict in channel incentives and objectives; unsuitability of retail store layout and selling style to older customers. The team identified 5 core strategies including a customer recognition programme, aggressive pricing policies and more customer-focused processes that would ensure retail policies were road-tested and refined with key groups of customers.

Result: The planning process took just days rather than weeks and produced an outline action plan that had the understanding and commitment of the broad cross-functional team who would lead the implementation. Conflicting projects were stopped, providing further clarity and focus on the main plan. Activities delivered included participating in a national multi-partner customer loyalty/rewards scheme and the launch of new tariff plans. At year end, the business retained revenue share lead and achieved the required growth in customer base, revenue and data usage.
[Back to top]

Identifying a focused, differentiating brand promise

Strong strategic brand development

Challenge: The client’s brand was “me too” but they wanted to identify and articulate a USP or brand promise that would help them attract a wider range of customers.

Response: In a workshop with board members, we articulated customers’ needs and showed how the attributes and benefits of the client’s offering related to those needs. We reviewed competitor positioning and identified the benefits of the client's offering that were different AND important to customers.

Result: We created a brand promise (translated into a new strapline) that differentiated the client, substantiated by a set of ten core benefits statements. This is now used to underpin marketing and sales communications and has boosted consultants’ confidence in talking about their business and what makes it different.
[Back to top]

Identifying profitable target markets

Customer segmentation

Challenge: A global media and telecoms company recognised that its existing customer segmentation, based on payment method, was not providing helpful profile data of consumer customers. They needed a much richer set of profiles from which they could derive new winning propositions to develop data usage.

Response: We undertook a large diary-based research study across a broad range of consumers to look at how and when they might use a mobile device to help them in their lives. The consumers were asked not to limit their thoughts to what a mobile can do today.

In parallel, we pooled data from other research studies and segmentation models being used in the business. The resulting segmentation demonstrated that customers’ “mobile/data” needs differed according to their age and whether their primary focus was on “work” “life management” or “play”.

Result: The segmentation supported the development of two new propositions to increase revenue from mobile data services: one providing games, music and information to a youth audience and one providing a set of organisation and communication tools for working parents.
[Back to top]

Solving performance issues through insight

Raising awareness and understanding of insight for performance management

Challenge: “Insight” was one of four cornerstones of a new reporting process used for performance management in a global telco. However, “insight” was poorly understood and often construed as “comment”. There was little effective gathering of data to discover the underlying causes of business performance issues and no insight being generated that would allow the company to find effective corrective actions to drive competitive advantage.

Response: We developed an “insight into action” toolkit: a simple process supported by tools. We then designed and delivered a one-day workshop to introduce teams to the toolkit, using a detailed case study on a live business issue (a revenue shortfall).

Result: After the workshop, team members felt confident that they understood what was meant by insight and had tried out a number of insight-generating tools and techniques that worked with a real business example. They felt that the toolkit would provide a great platform for raising the quality of insight reports generated in future.
[Back to top]

Revenue today, revenue tomorrow

Reviewing a product portfolio

Challenge: A global telecoms company had a 400 strong team of product managers many hundreds of individual products but no clear picture of strong earners and weak earners, outside the well known core product set. We were asked to provide an overview of the current product portfolio.

Response: We created one single list of products from several that existed in the business, agreed a definition of what a product was and then set about sorting the revenue-generating items from others that werenÍt really products at all: platforms, systems, features and so on. To the slimmed down list, we added best available data about revenues from each product or product category. We identified growth categories (like music and entertainment) and categories in decline.

Result: The team was re-organised with different, appropriate KPIs allocated to product managers and to those responsible for underlying technology platforms. The product set was simplified with tens of unprofitable or duplicate products withdrawn, reducing resource drain on technical and marketing management.
[Back to top]

Customer relationship management

Retaining more profitable customers

Challenge: A leading UK Internet Service Provider was successfully acquiring customers but also seeing high churn levels. Acquisition spend was substantial but customer lifetime value was falling and the overall ROI of acquisition activity was no longer satisfactory.

Response: We put in place a structured acquisition programme tracking system, to measure not just “sign up” but also subsequent spend by customers from each acquisition campaign. We then cut all acquisition media that didn’t provide the required return on investment.

In parallel, we put in a customer management programme with welcome mailings and regular hints and tips emails, to sustain customers’ interest in and usage of the service.

Result: Acquisition budgets were cut by 20% while the number of retained customers over a 12-month period increased by 25%.
[Back to top]

Raising the bar on performance management

Using balanced scorecard and new frameworks to stay on track

Challenge: The UK operating company of a global telco was measuring performance with a focus almost entirely on financial statistics. This prevented it from being measured against the full set of goals such as staff performance and customer satisfaction.

Response: Working with the Performance Management team, a new reporting framework was developed using a broader set of data to populate a balanced scorecard and to track progress of all activities on the business plan. We introduced a new process to prioritise actions arising from main governance meetings and a new approach for getting to root-cause issues and insight behind long-standing issues.

Result: Review of performance now related directly to whether the company was on track with plan and strategies. Development of the scorecard highlighted areas where data was unavailable which led to a separate project to improve management information.
[Back to top]

Introducing customer-led marketing in a technology driven industry

Bold strategic planning and implementing business change

Challenge: In the telecoms market, WAP was declared a flop by industry observers and customers. Critics pointed at the fact that all the telecoms players in the UK were too technology-focused.

Response: With a small group of pioneering thinkers within the UK operating company of a global telecoms group, Ordish formed a hit-squad to articulate a vision, a process and a plan to turn one of the world’s biggest businesses through 180%: from technology-led to customer led. While the five-step process we developed (from customer needs to customer propositions) was simple, the journey of “change” for the business was gargantuan.

Result: The successful launch of a new proposition offering mobile entertainment and music to the “Young/ Fun” customer segment, was testament to a significant cultural shift and the implementation of a new way of developing and delivering customer propositions. Several years after the “hit-squad” disbanded, the simple marketing tools we developed are still in use around the UK and global business.
[Back to top]

Developing a range of toolkits to hard-wire “customer thinking” into marketing

Making long-term customer-centric improvements and raising skill levels

Challenge: A set of “best practice” toolkits had been developed by different OpCos. The task was to ensure consistency of quality and then to rollout the set of toolkits to 14 OpCos around the world. However, marketing teams were overloaded and wary of relentless “New Improved” ways of working.

Response: We established a team of individuals with responsibility for tailoring the rollout of the toolkits to their OpCo. They prioritised the toolkits that would have most impact for them and Ordish supported them in getting the sponsorship and resource they needed from their Marketing Directors. In parallel, we ran a series of training programmes to introduce the managers of each discipline to the toolkit for their area of marketing.

Result: Via the training sessions, marketing managers became familiar with the resource set at their disposal and selected what was relevant to them. Several years later, many of the tools and principles are still commonly used around many of the OpCos.
[Back to top]

Winning new business with confidence

Developing a toolkit to support the sales process

Challenge: The client’s lead generation was based only on networking. They needed to develop a front-end to their sales pipeline that was sustainable and robust.

Response: In a workshop with board members, we reviewed the sales process and identified appropriate channels, tools and tactics for lead generation. We then looked at the “gaps” and planned a set of training, collateral and diagnostic tools to support the whole sales process.

Result: The sales team gained much more confidence, enabling them to win more new business and achieve their sales targets.
[Back to top]

See what our clients say about us >>

Perhaps we can help you, too. Get in touch >>