How to mobilize marketing to brand your shared services

It’s no secret that to execute on a successful company-wide initiative you must create a game plan, seek budget approval, and be true to your company’s culture. But to do that and also incorporate Marketing, HR and IT in a fun, creative way can be a challenge. And then to ensure everyone’s excited about that initiative, well that's a whole other story! Nonetheless, this is a story that Greg Tennyson, Chief Procurement Officer at VSP, knows well, and one that is surely worth hearing.

Greg had learned from his ten years at Oracle managing a team of 325+ people, integrating over 50 companies under one technology platform, and creating a global process for source to settle, that there were many challenges to overcome for a Chief Procurement Officer. His first lesson was strategic initiatives once aligned with a company’s culture can result in effective change management outcomes.  This was apparent at Oracle when vetting initiatives with Oracle’s CFO and gaining her endorsement the change management was easy as you simply referenced her support and it was done.

Post Oracle Greg joined Salesforce.com during a high growth, dynamic period.  The company prided itself on collaboration and using social tools to align initiatives with the culture.  This was his second lesson in learning how best (or not to) execute on strategic initiatives that spanned the company and leverage the tools/solutions consistent with the company’s culture.

As he continued to evolve, a career move was on the horizon for Greg (and his commute was too long!) He chose to take his talents to VSP, the largest vision benefits company in the United States with over 70 million lives covered by their offering comprised of five unique business units which range from retail to manufacturing.

Like many other CPO’s, Greg was tasked to find two types of savings in the business: cash and budget savings. Important to VSP’s CEO was that savings be repurposed from the business unit to fuel the company’s growth. (VSP may be on the hunt for another acquisition like the one with Marchon Eyewear, which VSP funded through a combination of cash and debt for $735 million which lead to creating a $3.3 billion organization.)

This time around however, Greg was going to do things a little differently, by leveraging the culture of VSP, thinking creatively, and working closely with his internal partners. In just a year, he was able to launch a company-wide campaign to raise awareness of his initiative to capture the value that procurement brings to the table and redistribute that value back to the business.

So how did Greg do it? And how can we begin to capture the value in our organizations, to make marked change and deliver back to our boss and the business for continued growth?

By analyzing, understanding and leveraging the culture

• Most companies carry the belief that their culture is unique or “different.” It can be heavily unionized with resistance to change, or forward thinking, young, and high-growth. Whatever it is, management needs to have a deep understanding of the culture to know how to communicate messages and motivate for change. This is one of the most critical aspects of change management.
• Greg took time during his first months at VSP to meet with all of his key stakeholders at each of the 5 business units (whose cultures range from manufacturing to retail focused). With an understanding of what makes the people at VSP tick and what would motivate them to support his initiative in procurement, he then decided to reach out to marketing to create a fun campaign to harmonize his messaging.  

By thinking creatively (i.e. outside your comfort zones of finance, procurement, IT)

• When given the task to centralize the procurement team, and following the analysis of the culture and personality of the organization itself, Greg went to the CMO for help. Yes, the Chief Marketing Officer. Not a character title you would expect in our story! Greg leveraged the creativity and willingness of the CMO to partner and create a unique and exciting drip campaign to get buy-in from the entire organization in support of his initiative to save money and repurpose it to fuel the growth of the business.
• Following the initial meeting, this partnership with the Marketing group created:
• A full drip campaign (drip marketing is a communication strategy that sends, or "drips," a pre-written set of messages to customers or prospects over time)
• A slogan for the initiative that was known throughout the company:  “Spend it like it’s yours or SILIY (pronounced silly).”
• A global website with regularly posted videos
• A mascot named MOOLAH, a six foot tall purple creature who was loved and adored (MOOLAH attended important meetings and they are even creating a calendar with MOOLAH representing important events or holidays.  The calendar will be used for a fund raiser.)
• A storyboard for the campaigns which allowed visibility into the progress for the initiative
• Considering that this sort of partnership (between Marketing and Procurement) is so vital and effective, why is it seen so rarely? Not many shared services executives have thought to ask Marketing for their assistance in a project initiative, but Marketing can help you to brand your team or your initiative, to gain momentum, secure buy-in and make progress more quickly. For most Global Business Services groups this is critical to the success of the GBS and a large focus in 2015.

Work closely with your internal partners (i.e. ask people for help!)

• We know that in a true global business services, each part of the business is fully integrated with the Shared Services group – HR, IT, Procurement, Marketing, and Finance, among others. Global Business Services operations make it possible for the rest of the company to concentrate its energy on successful and sustainable growth. Greg acted in a “true GBS sense” by leveraging an internal partner to assist the company in concentrating its energy on successful and sustainable growth. 
• Understanding that all this is largely cultural, and that coming from the outside Greg had a fresh view and the ability to make an impression when he first arrived, it’s important still to consider your internal partners here. It is likely that you are surrounded by motivated, inspiring and excited people that want to make a difference just like you.  

Get buy-in at the executive level (make sure they’re supportive of your plan!)

• This can’t be stressed enough. In Greg’s situation, he was given a clear goal upon joining the VSP team, but when creating his plan and working with his partners internally, he made sure to keep the CEO constantly in-touch and on board with HOW exactly he was going to get the savings for the organization. As an example of how “on board” the CEO was, he invited MOOLAH the giant purple creature and mascot for “spend it like it’s yours” to every annual  meeting held for the company. His supportiveness of the collaboration made things much easier.
• For any critical project, Greg noted that you must follow these steps to obtain buy-in at the executive level.
• Create a detailed playbook or game plan, leveraging your team and culture, and thinking creatively
• Present this game plan to senior management for budget approval
• Start executing, be true to your culture and values
• Communicate and report back your successes and challenges constantly
• Sometimes the most difficult piece here can be presenting to senior management for budget approval. Understandably so! But, this was not something that Greg shied away from. To get full support, he knew that any organization would be excited about an initiative which addressed the repurposing of savings at the corporate level, to support merger and acquisitions activity.  Although this goal may manifest differently across the corporation, understanding the lever points at your organization, you can get your point across and create a need.

There’s a six foot purple creature, and wonderful partnerships happening at VSP, but the initiative wasn’t all fun and games!

Of course the business was happy with cash savings. But they weren't so free or willing to give up their ownership over budget savings. It’s understandable that they didn't want to repurpose the savings with the corporate line, and there was lots of detailed work with the numbers themselves.

But to tackle this challenge, again Greg went back to the steps noted above to use every tactic and tool to ensure that the business understood the repurposing of savings at VSP.

Today many high-performing executives, and companies like VSP, have abandoned working in structures defined by narrow business functions such as finance or IT. Instead, they choose to focus on delivering standardized, end-to-end processes, and leveraging internal partners like Marketing to get their message across and achieve their business objectives.

Companies like VSP recognize that their businesses need more than rigorous attention to cost savings. This remains vital, of course, but top-performing companies know that added value, strategic input and a general awareness of the organization's culture is also required.