Business Sustainability Management

Online Advertising Buying Process Redesign

Client: Boston-Based Digital Marketing Firm

Engagement: 12 months 

Assignment: Redesign and implement a streamlined online media buying process that could be implemented across a holding company’s three marketing agencies. Success to be determined according to user adoption rate across all client teams so obsolete applications and off-line tools could be retired and the holding company’s ability to finally have reporting tools that manage cash flows.

Deliverable: Learn, understand, redesign, and propose an online ad buying process by leveraging the best components of all three agencies’ processes and tools. By engaging key client teams, their clients, and media sites to understand the workflow and information needs, a set of process flows, communications, and data reporting tools were developed to monitor each phase of the process. Once a prototype was developed (including forms and reports), adoption happened by client team first on a trial basis and subsequently by all client teams.

Outcome: All client teams transitioned to the new process within 6 months of implementation, and over 100 random off-line tools and applications were retired with the implementation of a simplified process flow and automated reporting tools.