William Reed Ad Ops 600 2

William Reed

Category:
Team Excellence Awards
Advertising Operations Team of the Year

Over the last year, William Reed has undergone huge changes – and the Ad Operations team is at the heart of it all. Despite millions of pounds on the line and huge business pressure, the Ad Operations team have excelled at delivering a seamless operation.

William Reed's Ad Operations team consists of 10 individuals, serving 36 websites in the B2B space, delivering more than 16k line items yearly, worth over £11 million. They have quickly learnt new skills and reorganised themselves to ensure processes are in place to overcome the challenges, while also continuing with their day-to-day activities such as campaign reporting, sending 150+ weekly newsletters, client services and much more. Not only is the work first class, but the team have a fantastic attitude and always embrace change.

William Reed's Ad Operations team consists of 10 individuals, serving 36 websites in the B2B space, delivering more than 16k line items yearly, worth over £11 million.

William Reed had a massive project last year to move to new CRM, Salesforce. The order ticket system completely changed and all copy chasing, and material delivery processes needed reviewing. Ad Operations were key to making the transition frictionless, whilst recreating all their workflows and automated email communications. The following testimonial from Alix

Hunter, Group Commercial Director – Manufacturing, helps highlight the team’s success: “Recently, we underwent a major project of changing our CRM… the Ad Ops team handled the transition with professionalism and attention to detail, minimising errors and maintaining our usual high standards of customer service and delivery”.

If a new CRM wasn’t enough, William Reed has traditionally sold on a tenancy ad model. Over the past 12 months, the Ad Operations team have spearheaded a project to move towards a CPM model, initially starting with what the team are calling “Guaranteed Delivery” – selling ‘buckets’ of impressions. To do this, the team have successfully had to change their setups, as

well as helping communicate the benefits to sales and clients.

Another recent and significant change is that William Reed moved all the Ad Operations team to the UK to become more streamlined. As Ad Operations service a global client base, and with sales and editorial teams worldwide, new processes needed to be devised, including team members changing their working hours to accommodate different time zones. This change was embraced by the team and has enhanced the quality and timeliness of the service provided. Holiday cover, training, and capacity have all benefited.

The team delivered 16k+ set ups, 15% more YoY, equating to £11 million revenue. The product catalogue increased to over 14,000 re-named inventory items, with more than 100 spec sheets updated. Seven new automated email chasers were created and the team implemented a new bespoke automated delivery plan alert. 6k migrated orders had to be individually checked, they had to manage over bookings, and the team created new end of campaign reports.

The testimonials say it all:

“Can safely say that the WRBM Adops team is the industry reference when it comes to fulfilling our customer's media bookings in a successful and customer friendly manner,” shared Ambrose Longy, Director of Sirius Marketing Communications.

“Having been a traffic manager at advertising agencies for over 30 years I worked with numerous publications and can honestly say the WRBM team is one of the absolute best to work with!” said Audrey Dittmar, Production/Traffic Manager for Quiet Light Communications.

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