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Services & Case Studies

Services

Our services focus our expertise on delivering measurable business benefits whether these be financial, market-share, operations or people-based.

We offer the following services:

  1. Event Management
  2. Strategic Transformation
  3. Programme and Project Management
  4. Mergers & Acquisitions
  5. Partnerships and Joint Ventures.
  6. Sales & Operational Improvement
  7. Sourcing, Outsourcing & Offshoring
  8. IT - mobile, desk-top and server
  9. Digital Marketing and Social Media
  10. Monetising Databases and Membership Schemes
  11. Big Data Analytics
  12. Regulation and Compliance

Clients

We work at all organisational levels from boardroom to shop-floor. Clients include:

  1. Financial Services : Ageas, Aviva, Axa, Axa PPP, Barclaycard, Bennenden Healthcare, Coop Bank, Dignity, Equity Red Star, Forresters Friendly, HBoS, L&G, LTSB, LV=, National Friendly, O2D, Prudential, RBS, Reassure, Santander, Scottish Widows
  2. Business Services : Accenture, Atos Origin, Equiniti, HP/EDS, Innovo Network, Regus, Steria/Xansa, Xafinity, Xchanging,
  3. Digital marketing : 50 Connect, Asperity, Club Together, Consumer Intelligence, CWT, Evoke, Just Answer, Older is Wiser, Redtag, Reward, Social Go, Social Payout, Social Twist
  4. Utilities : British Gas/Centrica, EDF, RWE, UU
  5. Government : DSS, Manchester LA, NHS, Liverpool LA, SPVA
  6. Third Sector . Age Concern Enterprises.

Case Studies

Delivering excellence in Event Management - France, Switzerland and Spain

We Programme Managed the marketing, sales, organisation and delivery of fiestas for Town Mayors in the French Alps, Switzerland and on Mallorca involving over 600 artists and 400 other entertainment suppliers. We sourced and negotiated contracts that reduced, by 33%, the cost of delivery and achieved record-breaking attendance and success ratings that transformed a budget cost per of c£500k per into a revenue stream with 14% net profit margins. Introduced innovative multi-language-based marketing through apps and social media.


Our MD performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival!


Strategic Transformation - maximising business value and potential

We helped Telefonica/O2 enter the motor insurance business with O2D by negotiating and managing an operational BPO relationship with the BGL Group and helping them leverage mobile location data assets to deliver personalised driving histories for their customers that reduced premiums by up to 60% and the accuracy of claims risk by 40% at point of sale. We helped develop a driver safety APP that reduced crash frequency by over 20%.

We developed and introduced a mobile app to ski domains in the French Alps that enables “pay-as-you-ski” access to ski domains for skiers and delivers targeted marketing interventions for ski suppliers and restaurants. 


We helped Xchanging enter the Wealth Management and Private Banking BPO market in the UK by identifying, targeting and securing a foundation client and software partners.

We helped Regus develop their data-driven marketing strategy and communications plan to expand their lounge access scheme, called Businessworld, and increased membership from 1m to 10m members.

We worked with British Gas on their decision to enter the electricity supply market as a defensive measure to protect core gas customers. As a result consumer defection reduced by over 80%. 

We worked with a provider of secure mobile payments and banking solutions on their strategy to expand functionality into new areas (eg: travel cards, ski-passes). This doubled revenue per user.

We worked with EDS Financial Services in the UK on their strategy to expand from a pure IT base into Business Process Outsourcing. This delivered 50% CAGR in sales, improvement in margins from less than 5% to 12% and increased from 5% to 14% UK revenues attributable to financial services.

We worked with United Utilities on their PR14 submission and diversification into energy generation, turning them from a net energy importer to a net exporter to both the gas and electricity grids and into a key supplier to the pharmaceutical industry. 

Programme Management - delivering measurable business results

We worked with Barclaycard on their programme to outsource their IT, offshore over 80% of the IT roles and replace their core credit and fraud management systems. This delivered a 40% reduction in costs, 30% reduction in bad-debt and a 20% reduction in fraud, without impacting either client or staff satisfaction.

We worked with Centrica on their programme to centralise operations from 12 regions into functionally-based Shared Service Centres of excellence. The programme had a budget of over £100m, affected over 40,000 staff and reduced their underlying cost base by over 30%. It delivered an RoI in 18 months.

We worked with Airtours Holidays on their programme to replace antiquated IT with a state of the art suite of Object Oriented systems. The business subsequently grew by over 50% as it exploited "a la carte" holidays enabled using the technology.

Mergers & Acquisitions - acquiring new capabilities, markets and scale

We worked with Atos Origin on the integration of KPMG consulting in the UK and Holland and Sema worldwide. This increased market share by over 10% and average margins by over 5%.

We worked with The Xafinity Group on their acquisition of Hazell Carr which was completed under budget within 3 months from initial contact to full integration. The business has subsequently grown by over 40%. We subsequently worked with them on the merger with Equiniti which has realised over £10m in integration savings.

We worked with a large private equity house on the analysis of the pan-European employee benefits market, selection of targets and due diligence and integration of the eventual acquisition. This business has since increased in value by over 50%.

Sales & Operational Improvement - driving top and bottom-line

With EDS we devised and implemented pan-European growth strategy for financial services. This delivered more than 100% growth in sales, improvement in gross margins from less than 5% to 12% and increased from 5% to 14% UK revenues attributable to financial services.

For Atos Origin we rationalised a portfolio of 26 products/services into 5 key service lines and sharpened use of USP’s by distributing credit-card portfolio packs to all employees. Following several years of no major sales Atos Origin UK won 10 major ITO and BPO contracts over the period, increased win-rate from 60% and increased client upsell from effectively zero to > 19% pa.

Working with The Equiniti Group we grew sales of the UK private sector pension administration arm by nearly 40% through new client mandates and an average 19% upsell pa to existing clients and 99% retention. Their competitive position moved from 8 to 1 in terms of market-share of the UK private-sector corporate pensions administration market.

Working with the Xafinity Group we increased overall margins by 10% to nearly 15% through consolidation of IT, creation of shared service centres, introduction of lean and six sigma and subsequent offshoring of c40% of IT and back-office administration roles. We also increased scheme member, client and staff satisfaction by an average 10 points, improved throughput, efficiency and error rates by >10%, decreased compensation claims by more than 90% and decreased error rates and end-to-end process times by >10%.

Sourcing, Outsourcing & Offshoring - leveraging external expertise & scale

We have worked on over 30 outsourcing deals in financial services with values to £200m+, covering IT, HR, F&A, personal loans, mortgage processing, life and pensions processing and contact centres. On average these deals reduced costs by 25%.

For example we worked with both Axa and Coop bank to outsource IT applications management and relocate 80% of support work to Chennai. We also worked with LTSB group to relocate key HR and F&A processes to Delhi and with Scottish Widows to relocate 90% of their medical underwriting to Delhi.

IT - a key component to success

Almost all of the major change programmes we have worked on have included a significant element of IT change and programme delivery. As an example, as part of the outsourcing and offshoring programmes at Axa, Barclaycard and Coop we were able to significantly improve the quality of delivery from CMM level 2 to CMM level 5.

Digital Marketing - new frontiers in marketing reach and return

We worked with a specialist in the over 50's market-space to optimise their annual e-marketing calendar across multiple campaigns, products and consumer segments. As a result of this optimisation, total sales increased by over 30%.

We worked with a large e-retailer on the introduction of a Social Referral Marketing programme which increased sales per campaign by 500% and reduced cost of acquisition by 80%.

Monetising Databases - unlocking hidden value from under-utilised assets

We worked with The Xafinity Group - a pensions administrator - to launch Club Together a business distributing financial and other services to members of corporate and public sector pension schemes. This business built an enterprise value of over £50m and sold over £1bn of goods and services.

We worked with a FTSE100 business services company and a large privately owned motoring organisation on their strategy to further monetise their databases with a target of delivering an additional £5 EBITDA per member within 3 years.

We worked with Regus on extracting value from their 1m marketing database. We helped them increase the size of the database from 1m to 10m and increase revenue per by 130%.  

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