Transforming linear audio advertising with cloud-based automation

Linear audio advertising is still going strong. The ads from a leading US media company reach millions of listeners every day. In each target market, ads must be carefully placed and tracked.

Unfortunately, even though linear audio advertising was still a crucial part of the company's modern advertising strategy, it struggled with outdated ad management processes. In fact, automation could be found in only 50–60% of the processes, leaving employees to do 40% of the work.

Employees relied on a highly manual and time-consuming system that caused immense frustration and a negative impact on productivity. A lack of integration led to rework by which they needed to enter the same information into multiple disparate systems. And it was too easy to mistype data, which made the system prone to errors.

One of the major challenges was a lack of standardization. Even though employees were working on similar ads within the same system, the user experience was different at each site. This led to advertising delays and mishandled data – contributing to lost revenue.

To begin the transformation, Genpact needed to gain a deep understanding of the company's current processes. To do this, we conducted a comprehensive blueprinting exercise to identify automation opportunities.

To develop a vision for the future, we reimagined the process using automation, based on a set of predefined business rules, with the end goal of creating a better user experience for employees.

To make sure employees would support and adopt the new solution, we involved them in the testing process. We also introduced dynamic workflow solutions to streamline work allocation.

The end result? A state-of-the-art, automated solution for ad management.

After a feasibility study, we piloted. This proved so successful that the company opted for a rollout across the enterprise. As a cloud-based solution, it is flexible, scalable, and offers reporting capabilities that will help the company fine-tune processes into the future.

Today, employees at the media company enjoy better ways of working. Employees can now provide seamless service to ad customers, and data-driven and cross-media ad campaigns can be effectively traded.

The solution is not only faster than the old system, but also offers greater accuracy at a lower cost. And, as complexity reduced, the cost of ad sales management has decreased and employee productivity has increased.

Looking to the future, the company is now exploring how it can use other technologies to further transform ad sales to support continued and sustainable business growth.