Case studies
Case 1: Setup of Business process optimisation centre
Background: International investment intermediary, working in area of contracts for differences was in review of potential outsourcing destination that would allow for increase in efficiency.
Scope of activity: Review of potential jurisdictions that would positively impact the business, propose location and conduct the execution.
Execution: Based on requirements set forward from the company, we reviewed potential jurisdictions where the company may have interest in entering and opening shared-service centre. UAE was selected as jurisdiction and RAK as location for the new company. We conducted the process of registration and setup of the business procedures of the company and related with external parties to ensure smooth transition of the processes. Initially the group had planned to transfer its advertising activities and then proceed with risk and finally trademarks.
Results: the shared-service centre allowed the group to benefit from optimised tax efficiency, concerning their group-shared activities. Transferring marketing investments, allowed for improvement amounting of 13% of the overall spent, risk and trademarks would subsequently add a further 9% each of the respective costs that each subsidiary was incurring.
Case 2A: Conversion optimisation for consumer lending
Background: Lending company, offering short-term credits to consumers decided to review review the its registration process and seek improvements.
Scope of activity: Review and mapping of the existing process, along with competition in the market, suggest, implement and follow-up on introduced changes.
Execution: We used Google behaviour analytics for consumers visiting the webpage of the company and recognised that there were pages in the registration form that were perceived very negatively by consumers. This was evidenced by significant drop in traffic on employment and salary information questions. Upon review with the lender, it turned out that these questions do not pose any significance over the initial customer review and were therefore redundant for evaluation. The forms were reworked to and questions were moved into the personal discussion with the potential customer, where customer service agent is able to stress on the importance of providing the information.
During the review, we additionally recognised that the lender was sending "confirm your email" message prior review of application. Should the application be deemed acceptable, the customer has to accept the terms of the agreement via clicking on link on his/her email. We tested out the removal of the "confirm email" step, since clients confirmed the agreement and the email itself together. This step was changed and instead external verification service was used in order to protect customer from making typo mistake in the application.
Results: the lending company started with lower-than-average industry conversion rate at 2.5% for its Google Adwords non-brand campaigns. Introducing the changes allowed increase in the conversion rate to 3.95% for a reviewed period of 60 days subsequently. No negative observations were recorded over the quality of customers and repayments after the changes.
Case 2B: Reduction of customer churn
Background: Lending company, offering short-term credits to consumers engaged in review of their customer churn and customer retention
Scope of activity: Review of market structure and customer behaviour and seek improvements over retention of customers.
Execution: We used data available in the lender's databases to evaluate average time a customer uses the products offered, which resulted to be 3,5 months. Considering the market and competition environment - a lot of companies offering similar products, similar price and similar features, along with next-to-none switch cost, identified that most common reason for losing customers was engaging with contract with competitor. Our suggestions were aimed at three main areas:
1) Establishing sales force to actively engage customers in promotional offers;
2) Developing of automated email solution to provide soft reminders for lost customers;
3) Offering special terms for reputable existing clients, allowing them to manage the payment terms for their credit
Results: out of the three suggestions, no 2 and no 3 were executed. For the past 12 months, the company's active clients (with existing contract with the company on average monthly basis) were around 9,500. Further 12 months after the changes were introduced the company had average of 12,000 active customers. At month 12, Email campaigns, on their own, brought over 7% of return-sales and were achieving cost-per-click saving of over 500%, compared to Google Adwords.
Case 3: Google Adwords Optimization
Background: Financial company, relying significantly on Google Adwords to acquire clients engaged in review of its bidding model.
Scope of activity: Review the bidding model of the company and suggest improvements.
Execution: We reviewed the existing structure of the Adwords account of the company and concluded that the structure was good to service the company's needs. There were no opportunities to add additional keywords that would increase results.
We decided to integrate the process with the actual sales and actual revenue -achieved by each client. We used available data to seek when the financial company acquires its most profitable and least profitable clients. Based on our review, we concluded that clients acquired during weekdays between 10:00 and 14:00, ones acquired from 20:00 to 7:00 and ones acquired on the whole day of Sunday were far less profitable (or even loss making), compared during other times of day. Customers acquired on Sundays had 24-month lifetime value of -130 EUR (disregarding time-value of money). The results allowed us to build custom strategy for the company with variable bids for its keywords, depending on time of day. This allowed the company strategically to compete less for certain clients and allow for increase of the budgets for the best periods of the day.
Results: we observed immediate reduction of the budget spent on advertising without compromising the acquired clients. The overall CPA reduced by 12% and the budget was set aside for additional tests in different channels.