Views   5th Sep 2013

Background

In October 2012, groupm Australia announced they would spearhead a market shift to Electronic Insertion Orders in digital media trading, automating business processes across all digital campaigns.

Says Danny Bass, Chief Investment and Intelligence Officer, GroupM Australia, 'Whilst digital is growing fast, by and large the transaction process is still very manual. Digital billings are growing… we need to future-proof the business.'

The initiative would see the WPP-owned media agency group become the first in Australia to mandate the use of Electronic Insertion Orders with all trading partners. In doing so, groupm would leverage technology to transform its digital model, reducing the cost and complexity of planning, buying, selling and administering digital campaigns. Significant cost savings would be achieved and importantly, a scalable blueprint is established for future-proofing the groupm business.

groupM partnered with the experienced Facilitate Digital team and our market-leading workflow management platform, Symphony Media, to achieve their vision.

The Challenge

Four groupm Australian agencies across sixteen offices would shift to electronic trading using a phased approach;

  • Phase 1: groupm Australia's main trading partners - the leading seven media outlets, to be completed  by March 31 2013
  • Phase 2: Further four key trading partners, to completed by June 30 2013
  • Phase 3: Remaining trading partners and Publishers, ongoing

Symphony Media's workflow technology was the mechanism for planning and controlling the way in which the teams worked together. It would frame the rules for 'how business is done'.

As key technology provider, Facilitate Digital worked with all teams to reexamine their business processes and establish ways to enhance efficiency via a singular trading workflow.

The Results

Phase one and two are now complete, with eleven groupm trading partners trading electronically. Over two hundred and forty Publisher representatives were trained across five states.

Having seen the benefits, an additional forty publishers have  also formally agreed to transact with groupm through Symphony Media. Collectively they represent over 95% of spend in the Australian premium digital media marketplace.

Other major agencies in the Australian marketplace have already followed groupm's lead and more are expected to do the same.

What's next?

The success of groupm's Electronic Insertion Order initiative in Australia has facilitated its expansion to other Asia Pacific countries such as New Zealand, China and Malaysia,

During the next 12 months, Facilitate Digital will introduce new Symphony Media a host of new features to remove friction and bring greater liquidity to the Premium Digital Media marketplace, increasing speed to market and throughput for the buy-side whilst increasing yields and the volume of transactions for the sell-side.

 By Tom Peacock, Sky Reidy and Napa Lopes- Facilitate Digital 

Contact

Tom Peacock
Global Chief Operating Officer Facilitate Digital
Tel: +61 (0)2 9690 3987
Email: tom.peacock@facilitatedigital.com

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