Case Studies - UBM Built Environment
Introduction
United Business Media is one of the largest media, publishing and event businesses in the world. The group has over 17 business units operating in over 40 countries in the world providing global live media and B2B communications, marketing and data services. As part of an overall review of the company's business a "Sales Excellence" programme was set up as a result of a Board initiative. This programme is aimed at raising standards and performance across the company's sales and project teams, looking at the processes being followed and revenues generated.
As part of this programme it was decided to gather the views of approximately 1,400 clients across a variety of business units. Thus a customer perception survey was agreed with the purpose of understanding what clients thought about their interaction with UBM Built Environment prior to and during project delivery.
Discover
Previously when surveys needed to be carried out, UBM Built Environment used simple in house systems to obtain information. However for the "Sales Excellence" programme it was decided that the quality of survey data needed to be improved and that better communications with their clients was required. The company therefore chose to run a customer survey programme using the Discover product from MSP. There were many reasons why Discover was suited to this application including the fact that it was easy to use for clients, with results made available in real time (no secondary data processing issues or errors) and its integration into a multi-channel project including telephone contact.
The technology behind the Discover product was developed in house by MSP's development team at their Head Office in Brighton, UK. It can be easily configured to suit clients' requirements and branding and can be implemented on a variety of different platforms including tablet and laptop computers, kiosks and PDAs.
Benefits
Better insight into UBM's customers and their perceptions of the business were gained from the real time reports and feedback generated. Additional benefits included the consolidation of data across different business units and a substantial improvement in the quality of data. This helped with improving customer interaction with the business and allowed the company to improve UBM's products and services to specific customer needs, ultimately improving revenues.
The "Sales Excellence" programme is now ongoing and further surveys will be conducted at regular intervals. The response data from these surveys will show how customer opinions have improved over time, and will allow managers of the various business units to understand their clients better, build better relationships and improve service delivery.
