Karl Renner

New customer rollouts of our display advertising product were taking too long. Building the ads faster would mean billing customers earlier, which means a faster return on marketing spend. The challenge was that our development teams were already highly efficient.

I formed a working group to review the customer onboarding process using a Lean technique called value stream mapping. Our group analyzed all processes between the first customer contact and the first invoice. We found many short delays due to waiting for customer approvals and third parties.

A strategy was designed to get the ads to customers faster, along with a roadmap of features that would support it. We would offer new customers unlimited amends and customizations to their ads, provided they go live with a basic version of their ads. Our team would then incrementally improve the ads in a live environment. This allowed much faster invoicing and actually led to fewer client changes.

We then built a suite of tools that allowed our design team to create ads without input from developers, further speeding up new customer rollouts. By the time we closed the project, developers rarely touched customer rollouts, and customer onboarding time had been reduced by 80%.

The planning event was organized for stakeholders and teams of teams. It aimed to bring them together to plan their workloads, exchange dependencies, and build confidence for the following quarter. Due to COVID-19, the event had to be remote.

This particular event included more than doubling the number of teams involved, with many existing teams being reorganized and assigned to new leaders. We had to ensure all participants were trained, had been through multiple event simulations, and had appropriate support to address problems on the day.

I acted as the lead coordinator and drove the event planning, lined up presenters like the CEO and CIO, scheduled training simulations, and coached new leaders and coordinators on the practical aspects of the day. According to feedback, all teams had found success, and it had been the best-run planning event to date.

After registering, users from Russia could choose to see enhanced versions of the content, including branded content that was invisible to unregistered users. For example, a short post about a new restaurant in Moscow would be enhanced for members with an interview with the head chef and their favorite cocktail recipe, naturally highlighting the client's beverage brands.

I was the day-to-day contact for the program of work, owned the budget and program plan, and ensured the on-time delivery by several vendor companies. The program included reworking the existing global CRM platform to comply with Russian data regulations, creating the website brand, content plan, analytics strategy, email templates, website, and smart-packaging (IoT) integrations.

The new platform was delivered on time, within budget, and handed off to the client's local teams for content production.

After a discovery phase to identify management needs for this web development firm, I categorized their operational systems into five areas. These areas were:
• project plans such as budgets and resourcing
• project software development tools such as boards and tickets
• project team workspaces such as doc management and tasks
• business accounting, such as complex invoicing and scenario-based forecasts
• business operations such as SOPs, contracts, and approvals.

These areas best suited to a software solution were related to project plans, budgets, resourcing, and timesheets. There was a secondary requirement to provide a project workspace.

From a software perspective, I reviewed over 50 applications, grouping them into eight categories, and from the list, I recommended two categories that could satisfy the client's needs. We then shortlisted apps for live trials.