During a telecommunications brand refresh, waste of resources is your enemy. Waste of money, materials, employee time, customer goodwill, and storage space, to name just a few. The cause of the waste is always the same – poor planning.
When we engage with clients at the start of a telecommunications brand refresh, they are surprised by how much we emphasize the need for up-to-the-minute data. Unless the brand management team has a big data junkie on board like me, who spends time slicing and dicing data to find exactly what is needed, the team might assume it has the right brand touchpoint information to create an accurate budget. Nothing could be further from the truth!
Brand management teams implementing a telecommunications brand refresh often don’t realize that, due to the sheer size of their organizations, they are using outdated and incomplete data. Retail locations move when leases expire. Sales channels change when licensing agreements end. Fleet vehicles are retired, replaced, or transferred from one location to another. This data often resides in different department silos with inconsistent updating practices. Smart brand implementation teams go to great lengths to get accurate data from all departments to ensure accurate budgets for a telecommunications brand refresh.
The most obvious telecommunications brand refresh budget-wasters are those you can physically see. A few years back, we were awarded a contract by a company that asked us if we could figure out how to use 400 sets of service van graphics left over from a previous project. The company had miscalculated the number of service vans, and paid for 400 sets of vehicle graphics it didn’t need. As we collected and analyzed data, we were able to find a use for a small portion of the excess inventory. The leftover vehicle graphics continued to take up storage space.
Now you know why we constantly talk about the need for comprehensive, up-to-date data for a telecommunications brand refresh. When branded materials are produced based on inaccurate data, too much, too little or simply the wrong branding materials are ordered. Brand implementation teams are then hit with scope change orders, escalating implementation costs.
Downtime during a telecommunications brand refresh is another way to blow the budget. This could be employee downtime or vendor production and installation team downtime, leading to customer dissatisfaction as retail stores are closed during peak hours and service vehicles are taken out of service. We see this all the time when suppliers rush into production prematurely and build weeks of inventory before the planning steps are complete. That’s why we believe in producing materials ”just in time” based on the detailed installation schedule.
Many brand implementations fail to hit budget targets and cost the company additional money when customers are inconvenienced. If you are part of a telecommunications brand refresh, make sure the data is correct up front to eliminate waste. If you need help, give us a call at 1.888.831.2536.
