From 'Green Light' to 'Go Live' in Just 8 Weeks

Following an extensive needs analysis, Kensington Mortgages (Kensington) went live with their new bethebrand system, nicknamed KAS (Kensington Asset Store) in Q3 2021.

The new system builds on Kensington’s rigorous approach to compliance and risk management by delivering pan-organisational asset storage and workflow management to further enhance their one team approach./p>

Founded in 1995, Kensington has long been one of the UK's leading specialist mortgage lenders. Kensington serves fast-growing segments such as the self-employed, those with multiple incomes and the over 55s - people the high street is not always set up to cater for. The company’s approach is to look beneath the surface and go deeper than the mainstream lenders where all too often the 'computer says no'.

During the pandemic Kensington undertook a thorough examination of the needs of its teams across sales, marketing, product development, servicing, legal and compliance in terms of workflow and asset management requirements.

Working in a heavily regulated environment Kensington wished to ensure it had the best possible systems approach in terms of aspects such as document sign-off, version control and asset lifecycle management. Being undertaken within the pandemic, the company also wished to ensure that it offered its teams best practice support for hybrid working.

With previous marketing team member experience of utilising the system, bethebrand was invited to tender. Two key aspects of the bethebrand functionality and support won the day:

• Usability - Unlike some other tender participants, bethebrand offers the ability for multiple internal stakeholders to simultaneously collaborate in real time through the document sign-off process.
• Complete audit trail - The system offers a compete and detailed document history – an essential component of the high level of governance Kensington delivers.

KAS went from project ‘green light’ to ‘go live’ in just 8 weeks over the summer of 2021.

The initial launch phase saw the system implemented across the business in terms of acquisition communications. The launch took a ‘big bang’ approach, with the complete portfolio of marketing assets going live at once. The second phase brought the servicing teams on board, with customer collateral being added on to KAS.

Achieving great outcomes from an implementation as swift and complex as KAS is testament to the close working relationship, insight and expertise across the teams of both bethebrand and Kensington.

In our continuing series examining the breadth, depth, and possibilities of how you can configure and utilise the bethebrand system, this time we are taking a look at the CommsBuilder functionality and how it creates time savings and cost benefits for marketing departments needing to work their budgets ever harder.

Operational Challenges

Having a really good creative agency is absolutely key in ensuring that you can punch through and stand out in ever more cluttered and confusing market spaces. But great agencies are reassuringly expensive, because you are bringing premier league talent to bear on your marketing challenges and opportunities.

But there can be a substantial ongoing cost to using agency teams to execute every single outing for the creative. After all, they are time cost businesses, but the cost in relation to the specific application can be out of proportion and consume as much budget as the initial creative development.

But what if your own marketing team could undertake specific execution tasks themselves? Even if they are not trained designers?

bethebrand's CommsBuilder functionality delivers just that. In fact, you could reduce the cost and time spent localising your campaigns by up to 85%, whilst maintaining your brand consistency across all markets.

bethebrand System Solution

CommsBuilder brings marketing asset execution and delivery into the hands of the whole marketing team.

By working with your creative teams in conjunction with CommsBuilder, you can create templates that preserve the sacred cows of brand, creative and compliance. But you can empower your team to specify and personalise with the help of easy-to-use design and layout tools within the CommsBuilder module.

Artwork set up as templates delivers complete control over the whole lifecycle of the asset:

• Generate packs for specific customers or prospects. In fact, create up to 100 packs at a time if you have all the personalising information in an Excel sheet!
• Deploy pre-approved content swiftly by locking down key components.
• Implement ads and posters through changing size and other mechanical requirements directly from your desktop.
• Change standard requirements, such as legal information, across the whole asset suite without having the fiddle and faff of changing each one individually (with the associated errors and omissions risk of repetitive tasks).

Client Outcomes

Circle Health Group is an award-winning healthcare provider operating Britain's largest network of independent hospitals. Circle's aim is to be the most innovative, patient-focused healthcare organisation and, by equipping its people with leading-edge technology, deliver the highest quality care. It supports patients whether they fund their own-treatment or are supported by private healthcare insurance, and the group also works in partnership with the NHS. Circle Health Group acquired BMI Healthcare in January 2020. The group operates independent hospitals, runs integrated care programmes and rehabilitation services, and has an overseas division which operates in Shanghai, China.

Design Manager, Natalie Bainbridge, said: “We started working with bethebrand in 2016 with a specific objective of helping us with the management of our busy and fast-growing studio. At that time, we were operating an analogue 'ticket system' on Excel as our workflow management approach. I had known bethebrand from a previous employer and we invited them to tender. They stood out from the other participants because of the CommsBuilder module. Combined with Template Builder and the Asset Store, we could see that we had all the ingredients for a seamless, end to end, solution. Onboarding was equally seamless, and our new system 'Kaleidoscope' was swiftly operational.”

Natalie added: “With 50 plus hospitals across England, Wales and Scotland, we need to ensure that our regional marketing teams are fully supported for all their local and workplace marketing requirements. By creating a portfolio of 26 templates covering every marketing asset that could be needed for local adaptation, we are able to empower our marketing teams to create exactly what they need for themselves. Confident in the knowledge that every asset created will be on brand and consistent, our central design team can then focus on developing new core creative.”

Natalie concluded: “In early 2022 we launched our new brand identity. Our bethebrand system was pivotal in making this project as smooth as it turned out to be. But what made an amazing impact was the support we received from the bethebrand design team. They created an amazingly adaptable new suite of template assets for local marketing deployment. We were quite demanding, as we needed to be quite iterative as we went along in incorporating all of the requirements. But throughout it all they were nimble and insightful, with a real eye for detail. They always made us feel loved.”

Would You Like to Know More?

If you would like to unlock the potential of CommsBuilder for your organisation, contact Chief Executive Adam Hainsworth at adam@be-thebrand.com.

In our continuing series examining the breadth, depth, and possibilities of how you can configure and utilise the bethebrand system, this time we are taking a look at brand guidelines and how bethebrand can not only make their management easy, but also have an impact on your marketing effectiveness.

Operational Challenges

There are many reasons why brand guidelines get side-lined in a busy business:

• They are hard to find;
• They are cumbersome and hard to understand;
• People ignore updates and changes because they are stretched and updates are hard to disseminate;
• How they are laid out in the guidelines and how you find the assets themselves in the company’s systems are the same leading to confusion and time wastage;
• Teams going rogue because they are unsupported, leaving them to self-interpret guidelines.

bethebrand System Solution

The bethebrand brand guidelines module overcomes all of these challenges:

• Because it is built as a microsite and extremely user friendly, the brand team can update it themselves;
• There’s no need to set a new PDF and send it to everyone every time there is a change, as it’s all online and up to date every time it is needed;
• Notifications of changes to the guidelines can be sent to colleagues via banner and or email;
• There are page layout options for both text and images, making the system completely customisable;
• If users require additional assets for their particular requirement, you can provide downloads from either the page or the asset store:
• With full on-demand image resizing functionality within the microsite there’s no need to keep every permutation and file type of a particular image – you simply purpose the master image for what is required;
• With the ability to embed videos you can provide handy hints and tips to bring the brand guidelines to life for everyone;
• Users can submit their work via the system to be reviewed by the brand team to provide a simple and effective ‘second pair of eyes’ approach.

Here’s a handy diagram to show you more, kindly offered by Wesleyan from their live microsite.

Client Outcomes

The outcomes achieved from the development of this functionality are best summed up by our clients

Founded in 1841, Wesleyan Assurance Society (Wesleyan) is a financial services mutual dedicated to some of the most trusted professions in society and is committed to creating brighter financial futures for doctors, dentists and teachers, so they can focus on the vital work they do.

Brand Executive, Katie Wright, said: “Originally we had a number of storage solutions across the business for our assets and brand guidelines. When bethebrand built our system, it gave us the opportunity to bring everything together into a system that was simple and intuitive. Like many companies we utilised external agency support to keep our brand guidelines up to date. Also, like many brands our guidelines and accompanying asset suite are constantly evolving. The brand guidelines module has completely changed our approach. We can now manage assets ourselves and keep our own guidelines up to date, with no time lag and no additional external expenditure. It has made us more responsive and colleagues, as well as our external agencies, can enjoy appropriate access to all they need to bring our brand to life.

Katie added: “A great example of the benefits of the module can be found in how we have been able to create amazing consistency very quickly in our slide decks. Every company has the same issues with slide decks in that they morph through usage. By having our template decks within the guidelines module, and a template within the assets area of the system, it not only aids presentation quality and consistency, but also supports compliance oversight and ultimately makes it easier for our teams to use the decks.”

Would You Like to Know More?

If you would like to unlock the potential of brand asset management for your organisation contact Chief Executive Adam Hainsworth at adam@be-thebrand.com.

Going live in 2021 with its new bethebrand system MPAH (Marketing Production and Approval Hub), Quilter is implementing its system to deliver pan organisational support across its businesses.

Quilter plc is a leading wealth management business in the UK and internationally, helping to create prosperity for the generations of today and tomorrow. It oversees £108.5 billion in customer investments (as at 30 September 2021). It has an adviser and customer offering spanning financial advice, investment platforms, multi-asset investment solutions and discretionary fund management.

Quilter started its search for a DAM provider in late 2020, as it sought to bring an internal network of databases together into one system that could support the whole business. The new system’s core objective was literally simplicity itself:

• Deliver state of the art literature lifecycle management to underpin its thorough compliance approach.
• Streamline record keeping and approval processes.
• Oversee and manage workflows and help drive project planning across the team.

Each Quilter business has its own sets of documents, communications, websites, advertising, social media, and sponsorship programmes. Rather than opt for a ‘big bang’ changeover, the internal implementation team started with the literature suite of one business with a system capable and configured for the whole business.

Closely supported by the bethebrand team, this starter project acted as an excellent blueprint for the rollout and demonstrated the agility of both teams in moving through design, configuration, and implementation in a matter of a few months.

An important element of the rollout is the quality and availability of system training. Quilter’s early adopters, together with the internal trainers and bethebrand’s account team, are able to showcase the system’s capabilities and improved outcomes to the entire business. This close team working provides a controlled yet agile approach with minimal business disruption.

An important insight shared by the Quilter team was that the bethebrand team was always there when they needed them, and they never felt that making a call to them would end up with an extra bill. This transparency and trust is key to every bethebrand client relationship.

B&CE offers a great example of one particular capability of the bethebrand suite, to provide a sophisticated, mass, document management system.

B&CE Group is a not-for-profit organisation established in 1942 by unions and federations with the intention of providing financial products for the construction industry. Construction workers, who tended to move jobs frequently, needed a way to build up holiday pay.

Its first scheme was simple but effective for workers, and hassle-free for employers. Every week, a construction worker would buy a stamp to stick on a card. They could then cash in the card to give themselves money to live on when they took a holiday. Over time, construction workers needed more than just a holiday pay scheme. B&CE created more financial products and substantially grew its membership.

Today B&CE is perhaps best known for The People’s Pension, a leading workplace pension scheme with more than five million pension savers from over 95,000 employers and £16 billion assets under management.

In 2015, B&CE started a project to find a system to manage the approval and storage of its communication assets.. A thorough examination of the market led to detailed discussions with bethebrand and its appointment.

Nicknamed DAS (Digital Approval System), B&CE’s bethebrand system incorporates tiered access across the organisation. Amongst the B&CE user base are a core of internal trainers and superusers. This allows the organisation the freedom and flexibility to expand, train and develop its user base as required, whilst having a core team of senior system ‘ambassadors’ fully supported by the bethebrand team. This integrated and cascaded to training and support is both highly cost effective and operationally effective for B&CE.

The sophistication and size of the operational communications to five million savers is vast. It allows B&CE the convenience of a single pan-organisational system to safely store all customer communications across every channel.

The system’s document management functionality is configurated precisely to B&CE’s requirements. It is combined with full audit trail and approval functionality that allows users from right across the business, not just marketing, to collaborate, create, comply and control an intricate web of customer communications.

The pandemic is far from over, but the summer at least allowed us all to take a well-earned break and recharge, ready for what the rest of the year has in store.

The return to the office process is not uniform. But whether we are at home, in the office, or on the move - or all three in the same day - we need to work together supportively and effectively and we need to get the job done well.

By virtue of our unprecedented business growth in 2020 and 21, bethebrand has shown itself to be the proven UK leader in digital asset management systems. We have seen a record number of clients go live this year and we look forward to sharing more of their insights with you in future newsletters.

Team Changes
Director, Stefan Russell has played an outstanding part in making bethebrand what it is today. For the past 14 years he has helped drive the development of the system with his first-class client insight and supported a who’s who of financial services brands make great strides forward in streamlining and managing their marketing workflow, archive, and compliance systems. As he embarks on a new chapter in his life, with lots of travelling and new adventures, we wish him every happiness and thank him for his amazing contribution.

Joining us is Client Delivery Manager, Karen Shaw. Bringing 27 years of financial services client-side experience, latterly leading Prudential’s internal creative agency, Karen is ideally placed to help clients get the most from their bethebrand system. What’s more, she was a bethebrand client for 6 years, which means she really hits the ground running in her system knowledge from a client perspective.

Wesleyan On Board
We were delighted to welcome Wesleyan on board earlier this year. Founded in 1841, Wesleyan Assurance Society (Wesleyan) is a financial services mutual dedicated to some of the most trusted professions in society. Having developed their own marketing asset management systems over many years and with an ever changing landscape of marketing techniques, channels and assets, Wesleyan decided to look outside for the best of breed.

You can read more of their move to bethebrand here.

In-house, or Out of House?
Many clients come to us after having built their own digital asset management solution in house. What they discover is that configuring an off the shelf project management or database tool can be fraught and that a ‘from scratch’ build has significant hidden and opportunity costs. We explore these challenges here.

Get in Touch, Keep in Touch
If we can be of help right now, or you can see a requirement on the horizon, please do not hesitate in contacting me directly. We would be delighted to look at your objectives and recommend a system solution to suit your exact requirements.

Have you ever seen any of those TV programmes where famous chefs try to recreate much loved confectionary? The branded bar of chocolate that has been loved for generations is deconstructed, the recipe identified as best as it possibly can be and recreated? Each time, no matter how good the chef, it’s not quite the same. The team that has devoted its working life to that much loved chocolate bar wins every time.

It’s quite a good analogy to the specialist application of technology. It’s a sophisticated ‘recipe’, where specific experience gained over a long period of time in delivering one thing consistently delivers the desired outcome.

This is very pertinent to the development of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system for a particular organisation’s needs. Every compliance and marketing department has a unique way of doing things. Every company has its unique culture on collaboration and idea generation, its own unique marketing communications mix and a particular combination of channels and routes to market.

Every DAM needs to be built around that unique combination. If you decide to utilise an off the shelf project management or database tool you are starting with a system with a multitude of business applications. It then requires configuration. Therein can lie quite a substantial hidden cost in drilling down into the complexities of the user requirements and matching them to the configuration options that are available within the chosen system. This invariably leads to compromises having to be made in terms of what the system can deliver.

It can also take much longer to configure than envisaged. If you have had hundreds of briefs for DAM systems, you can pretty much hit the ground running and quickly elevate above the basics of the processes into the finesse elements that will make everyone’s working day run much more smoothly. But if you are starting from a layperson’s knowledge of marketing and compliance, then the specification process alone can be a steep and risk laden learning curve. There can therefore be a substantial opportunity cost of spending time on learning and developing when there are bigger tech outcomes to create for the organisation.

But the challenges and costs only start with the build phase. There’s updates, fixes, ongoing security and new user requirements to support. With changes in personnel there’s the need to keep an IT team up to speed on a very particular suite of software that has a specific purpose, rather than supporting pan organisational need. Therein lies the most hidden cost of all - needing to relatively intensively support something quite niche on an ongoing basis.

Some of our clients come to us after they have tried to self-build or adapt something from the shelf. Some have unfortunately gone from the shelf straight to the bin because they never worked properly. Others have started out OK but become unfit for purpose because there are greater business priorities to support.

The required intensity of development and maintenance needs to drive an important return on investment consideration to be tackled at the very outset of the project scoping phase. The true lifetime cost of building a system from scratch, or configuring a generic workflow/document tool, needs to be calculated.

This calculation always leads to one conclusion - that it is better for the organisation to purchase a system that is built for the job.

In our case, we have devoted 20 years to building market leading DAM systems for many respected leading names. Before you start your project do give us a call. The economies to be gained and costs/time to be saved could be an eye opener.

Have you ever seen any of those TV programmes where famous chefs try to recreate much loved confectionary? The branded bar of chocolate that has been loved for generations is deconstructed, the recipe identified as best as it possibly can be and recreated? Each time, no matter how good the chef, it’s not quite the same. The team that has devoted its working life to that much loved chocolate bar wins every time.

It’s quite a good analogy to the specialist application of technology. It’s a sophisticated ‘recipe’, where specific experience gained over a long period of time in delivering one thing consistently delivers the desired outcome.

This is very pertinent to the development of a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system for a particular organisation’s needs. Every compliance and marketing department has a unique way of doing things. Every company has its unique culture on collaboration and idea generation, its own unique marketing communications mix and a particular combination of channels and routes to market.

Every DAM needs to be built around that unique combination. If you decide to utilise an off the shelf project management or database tool you are starting with a system with a multitude of business applications. It then requires configuration. Therein can lie quite a substantial hidden cost in drilling down into the complexities of the user requirements and matching them to the configuration options that are available within the chosen system. This invariably leads to compromises having to be made in terms of what the system can deliver.

It can also take much longer to configure than envisaged. If you have had hundreds of briefs for DAM systems, you can pretty much hit the ground running and quickly elevate above the basics of the processes into the finesse elements that will make everyone’s working day run much more smoothly. But if you are starting from a layperson’s knowledge of marketing and compliance, then the specification process alone can be a steep and risk laden learning curve. There can therefore be a substantial opportunity cost of spending time on learning and developing when there are bigger tech outcomes to create for the organisation.

But the challenges and costs only start with the build phase. There’s updates, fixes, ongoing security and new user requirements to support. With changes in personnel there’s the need to keep an IT team up to speed on a very particular suite of software that has a specific purpose, rather than supporting pan organisational need. Therein lies the most hidden cost of all - needing to relatively intensively support something quite niche on an ongoing basis.

Some of our clients come to us after they have tried to self-build or adapt something from the shelf. Some have unfortunately gone from the shelf straight to the bin because they never worked properly. Others have started out OK but become unfit for purpose because there are greater business priorities to support.

The required intensity of development and maintenance needs to drive an important return on investment consideration to be tackled at the very outset of the project scoping phase. The true lifetime cost of building a system from scratch, or configuring a generic workflow/document tool, needs to be calculated.

This calculation always leads to one conclusion - that it is better for the organisation to purchase a system that is built for the job.

In our case, we have devoted 20 years to building market leading DAM systems for many respected leading names. Before you start your project do give us a call. The economies to be gained and costs/time to be saved could be an eye opener.

Wilful blindness is far from a new term. It came to be used in legal circles in the middle of the 19th century and has cemented itself firmly as a concept, not only in law but also in many other walks of life. Not least of these is in business.

How often have we been in a situation where there is an opportunity for knowledge and an opportunity to be informed, but we simply choose not to? We choose to keep ourselves in the dark, blind ourselves to the existence of the facts, look away singing la la la la la la. (If you would like to know more about how we all succumb to being wilfully blind have a read of Margaret Heffernan’s fabulous book Wilful Blindness).

Perhaps the first and most common issue that we see in supporting clients obtain the right digital asset management solution for their financial services business is expiration dates.

Without a system driving a process to keep on top of expiration dates then keeping on top of them is simply a matter of human will.

The problem with human will is that it can be beaten down. Beaten by 101 different demands every working day, restructuring, reorganisation, people coming, people going, and simply ‘Well no one’s going to fire me for letting this slip, so I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and just start singing la la la la la la’.

In financial services, not managing expiration dates represents a significant breach risk. If you let 1 turn into 10, then before you know it you are into the 100s and systemic wilful blindness has well and truly kicked in.

If you are relying on the old ‘excel and email’ solution for document management then you are basically setting a timer for the problem to manifest itself.

If you are relying on an off the shelf document management and storage system, then more often than not you are still going to need to police a system with human beings, with their will to do the job being crushed every day.

Systems are the only answer to their management, because the last place you need to showcase your expiration exasperation is on a regulation audit.

Every financial services business is different, but the system process remains constant. With bethebrand, the system configuration can be set-up so that certain trigger events automatically generate a workflow.

So an asset that is both “Product = A or B and also “Audience = X or Y” and the expiry date gets to Z days, a workflow is auto-generated to start the asset update. In all instances, the workflow auto-adds the asset owner as the deliverable owner and auto-checks out the asset into the workflow. In addition, for example, if a print asset is archived, a stock destruction workflow is auto-generated to ensure that printed stock of that asset is destroyed.

If you are experiencing expiration exasperation, give us a call. You will find a friendly ear and an answer to eradicating the problem.

Wesleyan’s contemporarily named bethebrand system, MaRS (Marketing and Regulatory System), landed the second week of January this year and has rapidly delivered results.

Founded in 1841, Wesleyan Assurance Society (Wesleyan) is a financial services mutual dedicated to some of the most trusted professions in society and is committed to creating brighter financial futures for doctors, dentists and teachers, so they can focus on the vital work they do. Wesleyan partners with leading professional bodies, such as NASUWT, The Teachers’ Union, and the Royal College of General Practitioners, as well as advising large public sector bodies, such as the NHS Pension Scheme.

Wesleyan had developed its own system approaches, both in-house and with print partners, for a number of years. With the ever-increasing sophistication of marketing techniques, channels and assets, and the associated shift from largely print to mostly digital, Wesleyan required an ever-evolving system application. This delivered a clear understanding to the team of what their system was going to be required to do both today and in the future. It also highlighted a clear opportunity to harness the expertise of a specialist.

The decision was made to look to proprietary systems that could meet the specification. Most of all, Wesleyan were looking for a system that would work for them ‘straight out of the box’ - something that could be configured precisely, but that did not need development time.

The tender process was extensive and intensive. bethebrand stood out because it has a clear and simple approach at its core that can power intricate and sophisticated workflow processes. This is an important consideration for Wesleyan, which takes pride in the rigour of its governance processes. Furthermore, with 20 years of dedicated and focused financial services sector development, and many leading industry names as long-standing clients, Wesleyan was confident that it had chosen a trusted provider who would hit the ground running.

bethebrand delivered an agile and fluid system implementation process which allowed the team to be hands on with the system throughout. The outcome of this was that there were very few snags to overcome at ‘go live’, allowing the team to concentrate on the migration of its extensive asset archive and take the opportunity to audit and rationalise it in the process.

Four months in, Wesleyan is already enjoying improved outcomes; moving through approval processes at even greater speed without any dilution of rigour.

Furthermore, many more assets are achieving ‘right first time’ approval by compliance because of MaRS’ collaborative and diligent workflow systems.

Lockdown did not slow down Petplan in getting their new bethebrand system from brief to live in just 3 months. The new system, nicknamed RAP (Review and Approval Portal), provides a suite of functionality fully configured for the award-winning pet insurer.

Over the last 40 years, Petplan has helped millions of pets through illness and injury. Today, Petplan insures over 1.3 million pets, more than any other provider, with an outstanding record of paying 97% of the claims received. Petplan is a subsidiary of Allianz Insurance plc, part of the Allianz Global Group.

As the UK’s leading pet insurer driving a market-leading marketing programme, Petplan needed a system that could support its sophisticated multi-channel, multi-media marketing communications mix. What’s more, they wanted to further boost the business’ ability to collaborate, be creative and be nimble.

Petplan reviewed many different systems providers prior to appointing bethebrand in the Autumn of 2020. What they found is that many involved too many workarounds and compromises, or were too complicated. The team did not want to compromise in getting a system that could be moulded to exactly to how they like to work.

A great example of this is the RAP system feature to allow peer review. Rather than a signoff procedure, this allows team members to provide feedback and ideas for the development of new marketing assets. So well before an asset proceeds along a sequential signoff round, everyone can contribute and work together. This not only enhances speed to market, but also delivers the very best solution.

Petplan has built a powerful brand and managing brand delivery across all touch-points is key for success. As part of the build, bethebrand has delivered a brand guidelines and imagery site, all housed within the RAP system, providing an important brand management tool to play its part in supporting the team in driving Petplan’s competitive advantage.

The pandemic created no barrier to getting the system up and running speedily. A series of remote workshops allowed the team to quickly identify how they wanted the system configured, which laid the blueprint for rapid implementation.

“I sang 'Nessun Dorma' twice with Pavarotti, and he told me he'd heard 'Smoke' about five or six times, and every time was different. He was so jealous because if he deviated one jot from the traditional interpretation of the famous arias, he'd be crucified. We have the freedom.”

Some of us at be the brand are old enough to remember when artwork was created and transported in paper form in the last century. It’s hard enough to say ‘the last century’ let alone remember the protracted and time consuming process of marketing communications in an analogue world.

In those days where office receptions saw an endless stream of bike helmets and leather the concept of control was a far off dream. Marketing was far more ‘rock and roll’ in the context of Ian Gillan’s quote above. But the management of a brand needs to be a far more of a classical piece.

We work for many different companies in many sectors. But services businesses are a centre of excellence at be the brand. Brand management in the context of a services business is complicated.

A brand is the heart beat of a services business. It is built and defined by the product of a thousand gestures. Every human interaction either feeds or starves the brand of its desired positioning. So the management of a services brand can be anarchy if systems and controls do not lie at its heart. Because the brand is in the hands of many many people.

Digital Asset Management (DAM) has a crucial role to play in the management of a services brand. The brand identity is the emblem of the brand’s promise. Every marketing communication is the articulation of the brand’s promise, underpinned by systems and behaviours that deliver a customer experience aligned to the brand.

So if a good DAM were music it would be classical. Because a good DAM negates the risk of human interpretation in both the emblem and communication of the brand’s promise. You maintain control of what happens.

The heart of our approach is simple; to deliver DAM systems that revolutionise our clients’ marketing workflow management, ensuring full internal stakeholder involvement and delivering detailed archiving to underpin marketing and business continuity.

There is an important place for rock and roll in marketing, defined by the creative process.

But delivery needs to be DAM driven, to a classical score.

We are delighted to announce the ‘go live’ of the new bethebrand system for Just Group.

Named Arc, it is the culmination of a highly successful project that marks the progression (hence the name) of the entire business into a new era of content management.

Just Group is a leading and established provider of retirement income products and services to individual and corporate clients. As retirement specialists, Just seeks to positively disrupt markets and deliver better outcomes for customers. The business has a strong social purpose; helping people achieve a better later life by providing financial advice, guidance, competitive products and services to those approaching, at, or in retirement.

The businesses had outgrown their previous ‘out of the box’ system, which had manual components within many processes. With expansion and transformation came the need to replace the old system with a bespoke solution that would be a strong engine for the continuing needs of the business.

bethebrand’s close alignment to the needs and processes of sophisticated financial services organisations meant that they had the system, expertise and experience to support a major pan organisational change project, which would see the old system swapped out for Arc very quickly.

All the product and service brand propositions of the group timed their content management changes to enable the joint project team to transition the 2,200 plus asset library rapidly across. In parallel with this transition, over 140 team members were trained by bethebrand over multiple sessions right across the organisation.

This approach ensured minimal disruption and was achieved smoothly during the pandemic, when team members were dispersed because of the necessity of home working.

Arc has quickly delivered the improved outcomes that were anticipated, creating even greater opportunity to collaborate and innovate. A good example of this is the way the new bethebrand system has eradicated the linear way in which teams had to interact when changing collateral on the old system. Now, whole project teams can inject their thoughts and ideas holistically, positively impacting organisational agility and speed to market.

Since 2009, Aldermore Group has been backing people to fulfil life’s hopes and dreams. The Group has two operating companies; Aldermore Bank plc and MotoNovo Finance Limited. Aldermore provides financing to back UK small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). They support investors and homebuyers with mortgage finance, while offering a dynamic online savings proposition. In March 2018, Aldermore officially became part of FirstRand, the largest financial services group in Africa by market capitalisation.

Aldermore appointed bethebrand to support the savings team solve a time-consuming process of building and approving marketing collateral. Following an extensive workshop programme involving bethebrand and Aldermore stakeholders, a bespoke solution was launched within the savings team. The pilot proved a great success. It provided the savings team with greater control over approving marketing collateral, faster speed to market and a trackable audit of material such as webpages, advertisements and customer letters. Following the success of the pilot, Aldermore’s business finance team also adopted bethebrand’s procedures.

With the well-established systems in place, Aldermore’s customers have benefited as a result. Bethebrand’s solution freed up resources and allowed Aldermore’s savings team to focus on further enhancing their product offering and service proposition. The efficiency and workflow capabilities of the bethebrand system also helped Aldermore adapt its business to the changing Covid-19 environment without interruption.

Utmost International is a life assurance group which provides solutions designed to preserve clients’ assets and safeguard them for future generations. As of 31 December 2019, the business manages over £30bn of assets on behalf of over 130,000 clients. Its propositions provide effective and reliable solutions for clients who wish to control the wealth they have accumulated and manage the proceeds when planning succession.

The business is a leading provider of international life insurance across its core markets in the UK, Continental Europe and the Middle East and it operates in over 15 key markets across the globe.

The principal business lines of Utmost International are Utmost Wealth Solutions and Utmost Corporate Solutions:

• Utmost Wealth Solutions provides insurance based wealth solutions to clients across the globe to help preserve our clients’ wealth and safeguard it for future generations;
• Utmost Corporate Solutions provides specialist employee benefits including group life, disability and critical illness cover, as well as pension plans, to its international client base.

The company’s journey with bethebrand started in 2016 with Utmost’s Isle of Man office. The success of the system subsequently saw it launched in the Irish business in 2019.

The expansion of Utmost’s bethebrand system has been driven by the operational enhancements that it has delivered quickly and easily at every implementation stage.

Working extensively in intermediated markets in many countries means that Utmost maintains a very extensive suite of literature. For Utmost this means, for example, one product brochure may have many variations according to country, language and prevailing regulatory jurisdiction. Every piece of literature will have different stakeholders across the business. This creates not only a sophisticated ongoing project management need in terms of changing, updating or communicating new collateral items, but also an extensive and intricate archiving requirement to document the who, what, when, how and why history of every piece.

For Utmost, the key to the success of their bethebrand system is its ability to deliver simplicity. They have been able to harmonise different processes across the business into one best practice approach. It allows the team to focus on the quality of the collateral and the fostering of excellent cross organisational working, ultimately delivering great customer outcomes.

What’s more, it allows the team to react very swiftly to market changes, supported closely by bethebrand’s support and account management teams.

bethebrand expect the relationship with Utmost to continue growing to support the markets outside of Europe from 2021.

We are delighted to announce that we have launched the new bethebrand system developed for the British Business Bank. It has been 6 months in creation and delivers a bespoke experience to meet the specific needs of the organisation. The system has been named ‘DAhL’ after the well-loved author and incorporating the initials of ‘Digital Asset Library’.

The British Business Bank is the UK’s government-owned economic development bank. Its mission is to help drive economic growth by making finance markets work better for smaller businesses - wherever they are in the UK and wherever they are on their business journey. It is currently playing an important role in helping well over 1.4m businesses across the UK access the government’s Covid-19 emergency loans schemes.

bethebrand is a HM Govt G-Cloud Supplier and supports a number of Government departments. G-Cloud is a series of framework agreements with suppliers from which public sector organisations can buy cloud computing services. 4,200 suppliers have been awarded places on the agreement with over 90% of them small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), like bethebrand.

Over the last three years there have been several major developments within the Bank, the result of which has required a strategic review of the its brand, value proposition, customer journeys and new web and brand architecture to reflect a much more complex organisation, targeting multiple audiences.

The Bank’s products are designed and delivered through the market in order to improve the supply of finance for UK smaller businesses. It also has a strategic objective to deliver information to those businesses, educating and raising awareness around finance options so they are encouraged and enabled to find finance best suited to their needs.

DAhL is not just there to sign off materials. It is there as a strategic control and management system to help drive campaigns and ensure brand compliance within a multi-channel, multi-partner communications and education programme. It also playing a key part in boosting cross function and organisation collaboration even further at an unprecedented time for the UK and its economy.

Along the onboarding journey we have built a really enjoyable and close working relationship with the Bank’s team. Scoping and training during lockdown is not without its challenges. but with lots of lateral and creative thinking on both sides we have delivered something very special. This has included creating a system language style and help text that are immersed in the British Business Bank brand.

It is with great pleasure that we announce that British Business Bank is on board.

The past few months have been interesting times for us all. As a SaaS business we consider ourselves very fortunate to have sailed so smoothly through what are choppy waters for so many. We set out from the ‘get go’ to be there at every step for our clients, who have had the immense challenges of instant remote working to master.

Rapid Transitions

We have heard more than a few times from clients how bethebrand has played a key role in their transition to remote working. Also, many companies that we had been talking to prior to lockdown quickly accelerated their implementation schedule and we have also been adding new departments within existing clients’ systems on a very frequent basis.

Removed from an office environment it can become rapidly clear how much marketing might have been kept moving by personal interaction. But when you can no longer wander up to someone’s desk and ask for a favour to undertake an urgent signoff, everything must be driven by an utterly robust process. bethebrand allowed our clients to have that box ticked so they could get moving quickly onto the job at hand.

One Place of Truth

bethebrand offers clients ‘one place of truth’, namely the Asset Store. In there is every live document with the current correct version - forever essential during an audit, but absolutely vital in a pandemic.

By utilising the system’s comprehensive search functions, clients were able to quickly identify all the changes required. That has been no small task, with as many as 70% of documents needing some form of change.

That cannot all happen at once and needs project management. The system stepped up here as well, enabling teams to work together, traffic jobs with efficiency and keep everyone informed as to what was going on in a very live environment.

Eradicating the Watercooler

Without the proverbial ‘watercooler meeting’, managers needed a new and solid way to know what was going on. Over time we have built up an extensive collection of over 50 standard reports within bethebrand. We have seen a sharp uptick in the usage of these reports as managers help their teams perform the best they possibly can in the circumstances.

Those circumstances we just mentioned have been extensive and intrusive for many. Families in one place, home working and home schooling simultaneously, is very hard. By empowering flexible working, bethebrand has allowed team members to hand over the baton without the ‘straight jacket’ of 9 to 5.

Business As (Un)Usual

Though this is all far from over, we have all recently been able to enjoy glimpses of our normal lives. But there is no doubt that we have all been thoroughly ‘stress tested’ and we are bracing ourselves for more.

What ‘business as (un)usual’ has achieved for bethebrand is deliver probably the most extensive stress test anyone could have devised for it.

We are delighted to say it has come up trumps.

2020 has been, and is, a busy year for us.

All of our clients have been through enormous changes in their day to day working and we have been right beside them in making that rapid move to remote working go smoothly.

At the same time, we have been completing our own change project to ensure that our marketing and messaging reflects the business we are today and provides a solid platform for our continuing growth.

We are extremely proud to say that we are the brand and marketing workflow, archive and compliance system of choice for many UK and international brands. We have been at the forefront of the development of Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems that streamline the storage, creation, approval and delivery of marketing campaigns and key assets since 2005.

bethebrand today is the preferred system for over 20,000 marketing professionals, driving in excess of 250,000 workflows and a noted centre of excellence for organisation and companies operating in sophisticated governance and compliance environments, such as Financial Services, Government and Healthcare.

We enable marketers to work even more creatively and effectively together by helping bring teams and their marketing services suppliers even closer together to create and deliver campaigns with outstanding customer outcomes.

We take the time to understand the particular complexities of our clients’ communications environments so they can ensure their communications meet the relevant regulatory requirements by setting up standard processes to review items, create new items, or fast-track items with minor amendments.

bethebrand is proud to be Stage 2 FSQS accredited (the advanced stage of benchmark certification process used by major UK banks and financial institutions when selecting suppliers and monitoring internal governance and control) and be a HM Govt G-Cloud Supplier (a series of framework agreements with suppliers from which public sector organisations can buy services without needing to run a full tender or competition procurement process).

Our new website offers visitors a sophisticated insight into our system’s capabilities in a fun and engaging way. It also offers us the opportunity to provide ongoing updates on system development, deliver handy tutorials on getting the most from the system and news on how the company is growing and developing.

Business is changing at a rapid pace as we all adapt to our new marketing worlds. You can rest assured that bethebrand will always be learning, developing and delivering at pace to ensure that we are firmly at our clients’ side as they explore the opportunities that lie ahead to further their competitive advantage.

• Enhanced search capability - predictive search words, As soon as you start to type in the Asset Store Search Box, the system shows you the 6 most popular recently searched keywords that contain the text you have typed.
• Reports email instructions - Clients can now manage the preface of any report as part of subscription email content text. Ability to give clear instruction to the end user.
• Mark-up tool enhanced - To make it easier for reviewers in multi-asset workflows, we have added a new “Review Next Asset” button within the Mark Up Tool.

We have lifted the change freeze and are operating as normal. New client wins to be announced soon along with system releases and infrastructure improvements.
We are witnessing system usage levels returning to normal (although for some clients they remained unchanged) and are looking forward to getting the British Business Bank live.

It looks like the call that we move to working from home was the correct one. We are all settled into our revised working routines. Most of our clients are also transitioning to new ways of working.
We are implementing a change freeze for a period to minimise the risk of additional disruption. We will continue with essential updates and focus our development time on some of the projects/ investigations we have been wanting to get stuck into for a while.

In anticipation of a lock down be the brand experience has decided to move all staff to a home working model this week. Around 40% of us already work from home and we have planned for such an event in our business continuity planning.
We do not anticipate any disruption to services.

New Functionality added:

• User out of office functionality - Alerts users you are not currently available for tasks in workflows.
• Enhanced search capability - We have added the ability in the Asset Store to search for text from within a flat file.

New Functionality added:

• Auto create workflows - Functionality has been added to enable configuration so that certain “trigger events” in asset metadata now automatically generate a workflow. Saving clients time and effort.
• Branch Comms toolkit - We have reworked the asset distribution functionality so that emails can be created and sent to external addresses, with attached assets, from the Asset Store.
• This has been developed in partnership with a major Building Society who wanted to empower staff across their 70+ branches to send only the latest compliant literature to customers.

bethebrand experience is pleased to announce that as of June 2019 we are now fully FSQS accredited.

What is FSQS accreditation?

FSQS is a qualification system for the financial sector, used by a broad spectrum of financial services providers, including major banks, building societies, insurance providers, asset managers, et al.

It is designed to standardise and manage requests for compliance and assurance data for the financial services organisations that have adopted it.

As the regulated environment becomes more complex, FSQS provides a standard and simple mechanism for collecting and managing supplier compliance assurance information across the sector.

It is a cross-sector collaboration solution which reduces the time, cost, resource and duplication currently needed to provide information to financial institutions.

What does FSQS accreditation cover?

In order to gain FSQS accreditation, a supplier must meet a host of strict criteria in regards to operational policies and procedures. Topics include:

-IT Security

-Disaster Recovery

-Data Protection

-Ethical Business

-Diversity & Inclusion

-Anti Bribery

-Anti Slavery

What does this mean for organisations considering bethebrand experience as a supplier?

In a nutshell, it means that in working with bethebrand experience, you are working with an organisation whos systems and processes have been reviewed and accredited against industry standards as defined by FSQS. This should make it easier to do business with us as a significant amount of due diligence has already been performed via the FSQS accreditation.

I want to know more about FQSQ accreditation:

Further information on FSQS accreditation can be found here: http://www.hellios.com/procurement/fsqs.html

Jes Ongley, be the brand experience's COO has become the 2018 "Champion of the dice", having recently won the 2018 World Perudo Championships held at the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) in London.
click here to read more

https://toyworldmag.co.uk/news/champion-of-the-dice-declared-at-2018-perudo-world-championships/

G-Cloud 10 has just launched and be the brand experience are listed. This means any government department can easily start using our solutions by ordering / calling off from within G-Cloud.

Matt McColley, has just started with be the brand experience as our New Business Director. As positive feedback and rave reviews have been received for version 2, and subsequent enhancements, we have started working with Matt to manage and develop our sales pipeline. As a veteran of software sales, Matt brings ideas, structure and enthusiasm to our future growth.

One of the best known names in UK life assurance with an illustrious history is the latest new client to deploy be the brand experience's software to help manage their financial promotions and compliance activities - bringing a nearly 200 year old insurance brand back to life.

We are pleased to announce that we have been selected by a UK government department following a competitive tender process - more news to follow as deployments complete.

Be the brand experience are delighted to now have our first client in the Emerald isle. The specialist solutions provider in the European insurance & reinsurance market has just gone live following a speedy 10 week deployment process.

Our CTO, Guy Hainsworth, is having a well earned rest after the successful migration of all clients to our new hosting infrastructure. To keep up with demand from existing and new clients , we have had to step up the primary hosting site. The new infrastructure offers greater (and easier) future scalability and much improved resilience. Details of the new infrastructure stack are available on request.

We are very excited that the UK business of a major American insurer specialising in employee benefits have selected & deployed be the brand experience's configured platform to support their compliance and regulatory activities.

An award winning retail bank which provides financial services to small and medium-sized businesses has gone live with be the brand experience's solution to manage their financial promotions process.

After a successful configuration and training we are pleased to welcome another mutual to our list of live clients. This top 5 Building Society has selected be the brand experience as the platform to manage their financial promotions lifecycle on and we look forward to becoming an integral part their marketing and compliance activities.

Be the brand experience welcomes their latest client with The Medicines & Health product Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Joining our growing group of clients in the public sector, MHRA will use bethebrand for the storage and access of all marketing assets as well as workflow approvals.

MHRA procured be the brand's Digital Asset Library and Workflows tools through the G-Cloud framework. After a thorough search through the Digital Marketplace, MHRA selected Bethebrand to meet their requirements for a digital asset library and marketing workflow approvals. A quick deployment followed with MHRA going live a short few months later.

The G-Cloud framework can be used by organisations across the UK public sector including central government, local government, health, education, devolved administrations, emergency services, defence and not-for-profit organisations.

Be the brand offers Digital Asset Management (Asset Store/Library), Workflow Management and CommsBuilder Templates through this agreement. The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) works with both departments and organisations across the whole of the public sector to ensure maximum value is extracted from every commercial relationship and improve the quality of service delivery. The CCS goal is to become the "go-to" place for expert commercial and procurement services.

Be the brand has recently been awarded a place as a supplier on the G-Cloud 8 framework. We provide solutions for Digital Asset Management, Workflow Approval and CommsBuilder Templates through G-Cloud. The Be the brand agreement can be used by organisations across the UK public sector including central government, local government, health, education, devolved administrations, emergency services, defence and not-for-profit organisations.

Be the brand offers Digital Asset Management (Asset Store/Library), Workflow Management and CommsBuilder Templates through this agreement.
The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) acts on behalf of the Crown to drive savings for the taxpayer and improve the quality of commercial and procurement activity.

The Crown Commercial Service (CCS) works with both departments and organisations across the whole of the public sector to ensure maximum value is extracted from every commercial relationship and improve the quality of service delivery. The CCS goal is to become the "go-to" placefor expert commercial and procurement services.

Call us on +44 (0) 20 7199 0360 or email info@be-thebrand.com to find out how we can help with your marketing needs

Be the brand are pleased to announce that another Edinburgh based Financial Services provider has selected bethebrand to automate the management of their Financial Promotions asset lifecycle. Our digital asset store and workflow automation capability provides them with a cost effective, scalable and agile solution which will be up and running in a few short months.

To learn more, get in touch with us today!

Continued functional enhancements has led to fantastic results in 2015, including more new deployments than in any previous year of the company’s history. This phase looks set to continue during 2016 as positive feedback from users and clients spreads across the UK FS sector.

Our structured, client-focused deployment approach ensures efficiencies right from the point of Kick Off, and we tailor the roll-out plan to meet our clients’ specific time scales.

New functionality includes multi-asset work flows, video mark-up and a new dashboard. We always take our clients’ desires on board and release functionality to meet their demands. This new functionality is usually included in a standard upgrade and is available to all of our clients as and when they elect to do so.

Interested in a quick chat or an on-line demo ? Contact us today.

Marketing is complex, managing it doesn’t need to be

One of the largest financial advice networks in the UK has selected be the brand to help manage their advisers’ financial promotions. A different approach than the standard financial services client, they had an extra workflow configured to allow advisers to upload their marketing promotions for review and approval. The corporate office financial promotions team are alerted to review / approve upon submission. There are different SLAs for different tiers and all progress is quickly available on-line with user-specific dashboards.

Be the brand configured an extra work flow to meet the specific requirements for this process while still allowing other users to operate a standard workflow for internal, corporate use. The integrity of the core functionality is maintained for both sides of the operation and transparency for all workflows remains intact.

Contact us today for a quick chat or an on-line demo. See how we can help streamline your financial promotions process.

An award winning pensions provider has selected and gone live with bethebrand, our automated work flow / financial promotions software solution. With auto-enrolment deadlines fast approaching, this pensions provider elected to centralise their marketing processes for more efficient and transparent reviews and approvals. In under 4 months bethebrand was configured, deployed, users were trained and the system went live. With a Defaqto 5 Star Rating in auto-enrolment, we are proud to welcome them as another member of our elite client base. To find out how bethebrand can help you, please Contact us or ring us on 020 7199 0369.

From kick-off through to UAT and going live - 4 months flat. Our newest client has deployed bethebrand during one of their busiest seasons. Three core marketing teams, various external agencies and a complex corporate structure made this an especially quick turnaround. An intense penetration test performed by their Global IT department was done and our newest client is off and running with bethebrand. Another happy client on the books.

The first client to move onto V2 was one of our first clients ever ! After seeing the new release, the marketing team was keen to upgrade to V2. The ease of use, streamlined workflows and full configurability convinced them to make it a goal to be the first client on board. A key customer for nearly 10 years, they were more than confident in our ability to continue to deliver a state-of-the-art marketing solution to support their marketing operations. Chalk up another win for bethebrand.

A global leader in customer engagement and loyalty solutions has selected bethebrand to create and deliver products and services that strengthen brand relationships and increase overall customer profitability. Helping clients across a broad range of sectors, this outsourcing client will use bethebrand to manage all of their clients' financial promotions. By managing compliance, legal and marketing stakeholders early in the workflow, the asset can be sent to their client for approval after all internal comments have been incorporated. A full audit trail is maintained which streamlines communications for all parties. Another big win for bethebrand ! With over 1,200 employees offering services in 17 countries, this is a great start to a long-term relationship.

Our latest client has operations in London, Dundee and Aberdeen. With two legal entities and one central in-house creative team, segregation of duties and full audit trails were key factors in selection. The on-line Dashboard shows a personalised view of tasks currently outstanding and a few clicks shows the entire workflow - tasks, people / teams assigned, expected completion dates, etc. Traffic managing becomes easy with the Re-Assign function to keep the workflows as streamlined as possible. As the first new client on Version 2, they are keeping our marketing momentum at the forefront and our software cutting edge.

The much awaited Version 2 of bethebrand has been launched. Managing marketing just got a lot less complex as a complete re-write of the application goes live. We have combined our 10+ years of experience in automating marketing workflows and digital asset management with the latest web development technologies to bring the best solution to market. Initial feedback from those who have peeked under the hood has been stellar.

The parent of a long-standing client has chosen the Asset Store from be the brand experience to centralise logos, brand guidelines and other marketing materials. Self-registering all users on an as-needed basis,new functionality and ease of integration with other subsidiaries made the decision relatively simple. Full customisation of Asset Data, the powerful search engine and the ability to house virtually any type of file were key decision points as well.

Another Financial Services client win as a leading UK insurance provider selects bethebrand. With a large base of existing clients and an aggressive growth prediction, the need for a streamlined marketing tool was paramount. The centralised approach helps to ensure that creative, stakeholder, legal and compliance teams can easily integrate the brief, review, approval and publishing of all marketing materials, including customer facing letters and client proposals.

A leading savings and investments company has launched our brand asset management solution. First on board is the internal communications team who use creative templates to reduce art work costs while centralising brand collateral in an asset store and image library.

More details to follow, but another US based, Fortune 500 technology firm has joined our growing ranks. Along with Citrix and VMware, be the brand experience continues to gain ground in this dynamic, game-changing sector.

Following a successful pilot project, a leading health care provider has fully deployed be the brand's marketing resource solution in the UK to bring their marketing supply chain together in one on-line collaborative work space. Marketing communications and financial promotions are streamlined with the creation, review, approval and archiving of brand and marketing assets.

A leading UK annuity provider has gone live with bethebrand. As a marketing resource management tool, the solution centralises all marketing collateral on-line, manages the asset life cycle, reviews and approvals. Automating next review dates, version control and archiving for financial promotions delivers speed and control.

The MBA programme at Cambridge University, selected BTB as one of their Cambridge Venture Projects for 2012. The students delivered a 'go to market' strategy to focus our business development and growth. The team delivered an insightful presentation with some very defined and actionable outcomes.

http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/companies/student_projects/cvp/index.html

After an external, independent review of brand asset management solutions, Citrix has rolled out OneBrand to Citrix Online. Migrating to the new asset store allowed them to rapidly configure an extension of the existing solution for this division.

The Environment Agency has launched their external Publications Catalogue using our asset store solution. An extension to bethebrand enables assets to be available in a public facing library. The end to end solution publishes documents that are searchable and downloadable while hard copy items can be ordered and paid for, with real time stock checks.

See https://publications.environment-agency.gov.uk/

The new version of the asset store, core to our Digital Asset Management proposition has been launched.

Feedback has been amazing from both industry insiders and clients who have seen it in action.  We will be rolling this out across our client base during 2012 but if you want a sneak preview get in touch.

Sovereign Housing have implemented the Cre-art solution to help them maintain current levels of communications being generated but with a reduced resource capacity.

Communications experts are able to retain brand and tone of voice control. User created communications go through an approval loop before the solution releases unwatermarked communication items. The solution is being used to create posters, leaflets, information packs,newsletter etc.

After a rapid deployment and some intensive training sessions in Johannesburg the South African global financial services disruptor, Discovery, is now live using.

Our latest deployment, at a leading UK Financial Service challenger brand, has been completed with a successful launch.

Essex Council are piloting Cre-art to create low cost, on brand communications for public facing events- with over 40 users involved in the pilot.

Great news, be it a little late; Dunnhumby are now live using the system to manage the digital content creation and delivery.

Scottish Life has recently added full Print Management functionality into ComStore (the name for their customised PhinPro system developed by be the brand experience).

As of November 2009 all print quotes and orders are now managed through ComStore. Users can submit print quote requests to the Scottish Life’s print management company, who provide the quote back through ComStore for approval and audit ability of the end to end process. Print specifications for each item type have been predefined and are automatically pulled into the quote request to ensure consistency of print outputs.

Integrated reports provide a quick overview of total print cost in any given period including information on order originators, chosen printer and cost centres.

Liz Thompson, Scottish Life’s Marketing Compliance Officer comments: "The functionality is straightforward and easy to use and has enabled us to successfully standardise and streamline our print order process."

be the brand experience had adopted the beaver as their mascot.  In keeping with our environmental awareness campaign, the team decided to send Christmas e-cards to all our clients.  The savings from printing and postage has been put towards adopting two beavers managed by the Scottish Wildlife Trust, Charity # SC005792.

If you would like to make a donation to the Scottish Wildlife Trust please visit their website: http://www.scottishbeavers.org.uk/

Prudential's Insight Team send out a newsletter each week detailing the latest market research items (i.e. assets) that have been added to ‘The Hub’ (the name they give to their system). Previously this would have involved writing an email, downloading files from The Hub and sending them out with the email, which was not only time consuming for the writer but also required sending sizeable attachments.

The new functionality allows selected users logged into The Hub to create a branded newsletter with editable text fields (heading, introduction etc), the ability to select which items of research should appear within the newsletter (including certain metadata) and email this out to distribution lists. The branded email that is received then contains the entered text and the research item details along with a link to download the item directly from the Research Library (Asset Store).

The result is a simple, streamlined newsletter that provides consistency and saves both time and precious inbox space.

If the Newsletter functionality sounds ideal for your be the brand solution, please contact your Account Manager for more information.

be the brand experience employees have always been conscious of the environment and are quite excited about the whole idea of '10:10', a campaign set up and run in conjunction with The Guardian.

The whole idea of the campaign is quite simple; 'Reduce your carbon footprint by 10% in 2010'. Can this be achieved? Yes, it’s a matter of embracing changes and working together in achieving the ultimate goal - reducing the amount of carbon emissions going into the atmosphere.

be the brand experience have already started incorporating small changes within our office, for instance; recyling, reducing traveling by doing online demonstrations of our system, changing our electricity provider, conducting management meetings through Skype.

Co-operative Financial Services have just gone live with the latest upgrade (version 1.8) of their "alf" system.

The main additions were adding functionality to automatically inform relevant channels whenever a new or updated item goes live and also further enhancing the suite of TCF reports taking the total number of customized TCF reports to 10.

After 5 good years at The Tea Building it was time for a change. 'be the brand experience' have moved. We are now based in Scrutton Street, Shoreditch. Yes, the street well known for banksy’s ‘Smiley Grim Reaper’ (http://www.artofthestate.co.uk/banksy/Banksy_reaper_scrutton.htm)

Please note for full address details do view our contacts page on the website.

For further articles regarding Noughtilus please see the following:-

An article by MarketingWeek - Noughtilus unveils Carbon Calculator for marketing:

An article by B2B Marketing online - CAMPAIGN NEWS: Marketers must be seen to be green:

An article by MediaWeek - How Green is your medium

An article by UTalk Marketing - Carbon calculator for the Marketing Industry

Noughtilus was developed during 2008 to enable marketers to measure the environmental impact of marketing campaigns. The solution is configurable to enable different clients to define supply chain resources (in terms of their impact and impact variables/ drivers).

Noughtilus has been launched with The Guardian under the banner of eco:metrics; we configured a version of the solution to reflect The Guardians campaigns and resources.

Eco:metrics overview (from The Guardian.com)

Measuring the CO2 impact of media schedules

We recently launched eco:metrics, a world-first web-based tool that enables us to measure the CO2 impact of our own media schedules. We are offering this tool to clients and agencies. It includes data on supplements, microsites, audio, video, mobile, events and promotional ads.

Adam Freeman (Commercial Director) says: "We will use this knowledge to have an open and collaborative dialogue with our advertisers, which explores more sustainable ways to do business. In short, we want to combine creativity and innovation with sustainable thinking and best practice. Our aim is also to introduce tools and metrics to which the whole media industry can contribute. We hope that this will add to the debate around sustainable and effective marketing communications."

You can view the eco:metrics article at http://www.adinfo-guardian.co.uk/display/green-ethical/ecometrics.shtml.

Scottish Life have become the latest leading player in the financial services sector to select be the brand experience as their partner for deploying a Financial Promotion lifecycle management system.

This further cements our position as clear market leaders in the provision of Marketing Resource Management (MRM) technology to the UK Financial Services industry

Case study to follow.

National Savings & Investments goes live with PhinPro, our Financial Promotion lifecycle management system.

National Savings & Investments also adds to our expanding list of Government credentials with the Environment Agency already having been live for over a year; reflecting our ability to offer demonstrable benefits to Government clients.

Case study to follow.

Available to both PhinPro and Brand Asset Management users we released our Print Management module this month. The modules manages the print request, briefing, quotation request, response and ordering process. This expands the scope of both solutions to incorporate the print procurement and stock ordering.

Following the launch of our PhinPro product we are pleased to have ended 2008 on a high with three new client wins in December. The clients continue to demonstrate that PhinPro is the strongest marketing automation solution for Financial Services. All three wins followed extensive tender processes during which we were evaluated against others; and won.

Further details will be released during 2009.

PhinPro (Phinancial Promotion) is an off-the-shelf, configurable version of our Marketing Resource Management solution customised specifically for Financial Services. Operating in a highly regulated environment demands standardised, compliant and efficient process; Directors need to confidence that the Financial Promotion lifecycle is being effectively managed to minimise risk exposure.

We have embedded our extensive experience in delivering marketing resource management solutions to the FS sector in PhinPro. PhinPro provides a rapidly deployable solution delivered on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) basis.

Contact Adam Hainsworth (Link to contacts page) to find out more.

The 'be the brand experience team' decided to do something a little different this year by donating the money that would have been spend on sending Christmas cards to clients to the Scottish Wildlife Trust - The Return of the Beaver appeal. Charity # SC005792 - Our donation will help raise the £750,000.00 required to accomplish this conservation project. http://www.scottishbeavers.org.uk/

We must review our pricing structure; after the first year of use the Environment Agency have reported back that the solution paid for itself in less than six months of use. Great news, especially as the value generated will only increase as the system beds in and use increases.

The UK's leading ethical financial services group has selected be the brand experience to create and deploy a large-scale marketing resource management system. The customised system (alf), caters for Co-operative Bank, Co-operative Insurance and Smile Bank, and provides a robust and auditable process for managing the development and use ofall marketing materials. The system is customised to suit the size and complexity of CFS’s organisational processes and supply chain, and also includes a centralised asset store from which the latest versions of all marketing materials can be accessed.

The system places a particular emphasis on ensuring compliance with FSA regulations during the approval process, and key anticipated benefits include greater control and visibility, reduced lead times, faster signoff and less document circulation. Other benefits result from increasing the value realised from brand assets, and reducing the costs associated with creating and updating them.

CFS has recently undergone a large restructure and alf is a key part of their new way of working. The transformation was a collaborative effort involving a number of parties, including be the brand experience.

be the brand experience provided full training for all users, who ranged from Compliance and Marketing to Legal, Technical and Business Management. be also successfully integrated multiple design and print agencies into the final solution and had them fully trained prior to going live. The system was successfully launched late February 2008, following a well-executed pilot run.

"We are delighted that CFS chose be the brand experience to help them manage the process for creating, approving and storing their marketing and communications materials and we are proud to be working with the market leader in ethical FS products"

Jes Ongley, be the brand experience

About Co-operative Financial Services (CFS)

With some 6.5 million customers, Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) is a leading provider of car insurance, mortgages, current accounts, home and contents insurance, credit cards, life assurance, personal loan and pensions. CFS was formed in 2002 to bring The Co-operative Bank, Smile and the Co-operative Insurance Society (CIS) together, and has developed a reputation for providing quality products and services and leading the way on ethics and the environment.

About be the brand experience

Be the brand experience is a leading provider of Marketing Resource Management technology (MRM). Be the brand experience enables clients to achieve more by developing effective, affordable custom-built technology solutions that empower users to better manage marketing workflows, brand assets and suppliers, resulting in lower costs, lower lead times and greater brand consistency and compliance. For more information, please contact info@be-thebrand.com.

be the brand experience has just launched a powerful new tool that revolutionises the way document owners interact with their colleagues during the reviewing process. The solution emerged out of be’s extensive experience of reviewing processes in a number of blue-chip client organisations, and not only ensures that the right people are involved at each stage, but also captures their comments in a simple and collaborative online environment. The final document is only made available after having been approved by all stakeholders.

Early uptake amongst a number of be’s existing clients has confirmed that the tool is able to significantly reduce the number of times documents need to be circulated, freeing up valuable time and resources within client organisations.

Main Features:

- Collaborative reviewing - allows reviewing to take place in a simple collaborative online environment

- Full comment history - captures all comments in full

- Enables rapid creation of agency brief

Recent Client Highlights

- "Removes need for every system user to have Adobe Acrobat in full, which greatly reduces our Adobe licensing fees"

- "Process efficiencies - no need to collate all comments from different reviewers into a single document, (saves project manager huge amount of time and effort)"

- Reduced number of document circulations saves effort and reduces lead times”

For more information, or to take advantage of this fantastic new solution, contact your client services manager now, or email us at info@be-thebrand.com.

About be the brand experience

be the brand experience is a leading provider of Marketing Resource Management technology (MRM). be the brand experience enables clients to achieve more by developing effective, affordable custom-built technology solutions that empower users to better manage marketing workflows, brand assets and suppliers, resulting in lower costs, lower lead times and greater brand consistency and compliance. For more information, please contact info@be-thebrand.com.

In their recent special 'Green Supplement', Media Week highlighted how the media sector has arguably been "slower than other industries to adopt environmentally friendly policies into everyday practice", also noting how it has never been under more pressure to do so:

"Reducing carbon footprints is simple housekeeping for businesses in areas such as retail and finance. These firms are turning attention to their supply chain. If an agency hasn’t been asked about this already, it certainly will be this year."

Solitaire Townsend, CEO of sustainable communications agency Futerra

In light of this, journalist Patrick Dye used Noughtilus to illustrate the carbon footprint of a typical TV ad Vs a Standard Press Campaign. The analysis highlighted some of the most carbon intensive activities involved in each campaign, which ranged the sheer volume of paper consumed to a series of long haul flights for filming overseas.

The report voices growing concern amongst brands, media owners, agencies and clients about the environmental impact of marketing activities, and further emphasises the need to measure and manage the environmental impact of marketing campaigns.

Good news for Noughtilus, which is uniquely positioned to help them do just that.

The MediaWeek Green Supplement is available online at the following address, http://green.mediaweek.co.uk/index.aspx

Or to find out more about Noughtilus, please visit www.noughtilus.com, or email info@noughtilus.com.

StudioBe is a ground-breaking new design service based on a technology that streamlines and automates much of the non-creative side of design agency work. The technology produces a wide range of quality post-concept communications materials quickly and efficiently, providing you with a far superior return on your investment than conventional alternatives.

This technology based creative production service has been created in response to the accelerating trend of disaggregation of creative services. StudioBe saves time and money by looking specifically at post-concept tactical design and communications work, and tackling it efficiently from an automated mass-customisation perspective.

How it works:

Typically, your lead agency develops your campaign/brand concept
We create live, flexible templates according to standard brand guidelines
This enables us to produce a wide range of custom-built professional branded communications materials quickly and efficiently
Our software manages the development and approval process according to your unique business model
All costs, activities and mark up comments are tracked and recorded - increasing clarity and rendering each project fully transparent and auditable
Benefits:

You pay a single flat rate with no hidden extras
You avoid paying premium rates for simple day-to-day tactical design work
We support your creative team, taking the strain of the mundane off their hands and enabling them to focus their talents on more creative work-streams
You reduce communication lead-times, increase your communication turnaround and drastically improve your ability to meet and exceed your communications objectives
About be the brand experience

be the brand experience is a leading provider of Marketing Resource Management technology (MRM). be the brand experience enables clients to achieve more by developing effective, affordable custom-built technology solutions that empower users to better manage marketing workflows, brand assets and suppliers, resulting in lower costs, lower lead times and greater brand consistency and compliance. For more information, please contact info@be-thebrand.com.

Distributing files is difficult and time consuming, especially with standardfile size restrictions on emails. However, it’s becoming increasingly importantto be able to access and distribute large files, both internally and remotely.In order to overcome this problem, you may find that you are unofficiallyresorting to unsecured removable media or a number of questionable websitesoffering free-upload services. Such practices don’t just expose yourorganisation to inappropriate content and spamming devices, they also createserious security risks and undermine process controls that manage access tocontent.

The solution is 'My Store'.
My Store lets you professionally store, access, and share large files with ease,whilst also enabling you to manage access parameters. Below are some of thehighlights and benefits of this

Highlights:

Usability

• One-shot multiple file upload
• Tagging

Security Control:

• Secure file storage and distribution
• Automatic virus scanning on upload
• Automatic logging of file distribution history
• Automatic logging of external file downloads
• Control over access parameters

Benefits:

• Improves large file management
• Improves internal file distribution & sharing
• Enables external file distribution
• Provides greater security and control

First takers:
Prudential are the first client to take advantageof this new module. They will use it to manage the process of sending largeartwork files to printers.

Adam Hainsworth (CEO of be the brand experience) attended the Westminster Carbon Counting Conference on the 24th of January 2008 on behalf of Noughtilus; a radical new online tool that enables marketing professionals to measure and manage their environmental impact.

With support from the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group (APPCCG), the Open University and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, the conference launched the first of a yearly Carbon Counting initiative, bringing together leading figures in the field of carbon accounting to collectively review, develop and update the main carbon counting methods using case studies and rationales.

Held in the prestigious venue of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the initiative essentially provided a forum for businesses, politicians, local authorities, consultants, professionals and academics with a stake in carbon counting, auditing and targeting to get together and ensure their methodologies are mutually compatible, effective, replicable and relevant to the wider social challenge of reducing carbon emissions nationally and globally.

The event was followed by a reception at the House of Commons.

As brands are becoming more aware of the need become sustainable the scope of Marketing Resource Management systems needs to expand to consider the footprint of resources that are used in marketing. As the link between the consumer and production marketeers need to both incorporate sustainability into their brand message and ensure they work in a way that minimises the footprint of marketing activites.

be the brand experience has deepened the functionality within the MRM solution to incorporate sustainability gateways into workfow processes.

In a separate venture with Clownfish Marketing we are launching Noughtilus llp; a solution focussed on enabling marketeers to evalute the social, environmental and ethical impact of channel marketing activities.

be the brand experience has supported the initial phase of the recently launched AchieveZero. AchieveZero is a WOM (Word of Mouth) concept focussed on creating a community of people who want to support businesses that have committed to a sustainable future through changing their purchasing pattern (and influencing their friends and colleagues).

Fur further information on be the brand experience's leadership in marketing automation please contact us.

The leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales has selected be the brand experience to create and deploy a centralised online brand asset management solution across their supply chain. The system will not only manage the development and use of key brand resources, but will also empower people to generate brand consistent marketing materials using templates.

Key benefits of the system include reducing the costs associated with developing and updating brand assets, increasing the utilisation of and value realised from key brand resources, and strengthening brand consistency. It will also free up design resources to focus on more creative tasks. From October 2007, a user base exceeding two hundred have been using the system with great success.

"We are excited that the Environment Agency selected us after a comprehensive competitor review. They are a fantastic client and we are very much looking forward to working together"

Adam Hainsworth (CEO), Be the Brand Experience

"Our Brand Bank system is a fantastic way to manage our brand. It means that our assets are up-to-the-minute and everyone works to the same standards. And our templates make for flexible, easy and cost-effective communications."

Margaret Gladstone, The Environment Agency

Who is the Environment Agency?

The Environment Agency is the leading public body for protecting and improving the environment in England and Wales. They work to ensure that the environment is looked after by everyone, so that tomorrow's generations inherit a cleaner, healthier world.

Adam Hainsworth, CEO of be the brand experience, is to hold a session on green marketing at the DMA's Ethical Marketing: The Business Opportunity seminar.

Key Content at the seminar:

- What the latest research shows about consumers' buying habits and changing trends and how they are affected by ethical marketing around a product.
- How to be more ethically sound in communications in order to appeal to more environmentally friendly consumers.
- How to get your initiatives heard by the relevant parties.
- Plus a series of case studies from leading brands.

Please visit Ethical Marketing: The Business Opportunity website (http://www.dma.org.uk/content/Evt-Article.asp?id=3990) for more information.

09 March 2007, Paris La Défense: Adetem is the French National Marketing Association consisting of 670 companies and over 1300 members.

Adetem has 3 main objectives:

- to organise and promote exchange between marketing professionnals
- to provide information about markets, business environments, events and marketing news
- to communicate marketing best practices to all members

The presentation will develop understanding of how technology can be used by marketers to manage the challenges of maintaining brand equity in a multi-channel environment. Some of the issues discussed will be brand dilution, need of increasing speed to market/ internal process efficiency and lack of visibility on activities and costs.

Presentation will be for the 'Communications et Marketing' club (Adetem has 11 professionnal active clubs).

Details and subscription (text in french) HERE (http://www.phillips-internet.fr/adetem/coMmars.html).

January 2007: be the brand experience have enhanced the CommsBuilder module, to allow end users to easily create professional, personalised HTML communications via customised pre-loaded design templates. The user needs no HTML skills or knowledge what-so-ever.

Templates have fixed place-holders built-in, which gives marketers the freedom to insert images, text, links or imbed video. These placeholders give great flexibility in design, but always adhere to brand guidelines specified during the creation of the template. Additional features include being able to easily hyper link the reader/recipient to on-page or external destination.

The templates link to a central database (the Asset Store), where all approved images are kept. In addition, users can also be allowed to add images from their local directories.

The HTML extension builds on the current (print) CommsBuilder functionality, with its easy to use interface, and can be linked to your existing e-communication distribution engine - drastically cutting the cost of creating and re-working e-communications.

The HTML CommsBuilder is currently in beta testing and will be live in the first quarter of 2007.

After 12 months of running their marketing literature creation and sign off processes, and storing all materials via Prustore, Prudential are now rolling out Prustore to other areas of the business - thus further increasing its benefits. Over 9,000 projects (each equating to creating or updating a piece of literature or web page) have been run so far with a full audit trail of approvals easily accessible as per FSA requirements.

First to come on board was PruHealth (a joint venture with Discovery - a South African company) who went live in March 2006 after a short proof of concept. Where necessary, Prustore has been tweaked to accommodate variations in their workflow process.

The Customer Response Unit (CRU) went live in May and use Prustore to store, access and update all templates of all customer facing letters and post sale support.

Customer Services are likely to be the next area of the business to begin using Prustore and are currently going through the scoping process to agree their exact needs and required processes.

UIA has deployed a new customised marketing resource management solution to improve marketing efficiency and help keep marketing campaigns in line with financial regulations. The deal was signed with be the brand experience, a services provider firm.

Brandstore will enable UIA to co-ordinate direct mail, advertising and digital marketing campaigns, improve approval processes and keep complete, easily accessible, electronic audit trails for regulatory compliance purposes.

"We were impressed with the functionality of be the brand's MRM solution," said Damian Reilly, head of marketing at UIA. "The tool gives us the ability to electronically co-ordinate all parties involved in the marketing campaign process...

To read the full story, please register HERE (http://www.postmagazine.co.uk/public/showPage.html?page=post_breakingnews_story&tempPageName=334443) to continue.

be the brand experience sponsors the annual Henry Stewart MOM conference held in the Radisson Hotel in London.

22 May, London: This summer marks the five year anniversary of Henry Stewart's Digital Asset Management (DAM) Symposium and sees the international event for DAM and Marketing Operations Management (MOM) return home on 20 & 21 June for its 2006 London show. The event features a wealth of case studies highlighting real world knowledge and lessons learned, and the successes and ambitions of DAM and MOM professionals who have successfully deployed and leveraged asset management to create new capabilities and revenues.

The symposium offers an intensive two-day programme tailored to the specific objectives of project leaders in all phases of DAM & MOM implementation - from basic storage, search and retrieval, to the integration of metadata into ingest-create-manage-distribute workflows.

Renowned for respecting the value of real world experience, Henry Stewart hands over to the true experts, professional practitioners of DAM and MOM, to provide essential best practices and actionable advice on how to select, deploy, maintain and leverage these technologies and strategies.

Read the full press release HERE (http://www.damusers.com/press_release_Lon06.asp)

Citrix further integrate asset store and projects modules, linking with print mgt company stock systems.

be the brand experience have just updated Citrix System Inc's OneBrand MRM solution. This upgrade enhances the design of OneBrand to ensure that Citrix's brand management tool followed Citrix's latest website guidelines.

This update also saw OneBrand integrating with JKG Group, Citrix's print management vendors, print fulfilment system. The was a joint project in which be's technical team worked with JKGs technical team to provide a end to end asset management, workflow and print fulfilment ordering system for marketers in Citrix and their channel partners.

OneBrand added a cart shopping basket functionality that enables users to add selected orderable collateral. On checking out, the order is placed into the JKG fulfilment system.

"Implementing an MRM system can greatly improve the efficiency of a company's marketing function" says Adam Hainsworth in the May Issue of Financial Marketing Magazine.

While it's fair to say that in the past financial services companies were never pioneers in brand management, over the last decade, they have done a lot to change this.
Today, successful brand building and management is vital to ensure survival.
With non financial brands entering the market and stepping up the competition, traditional financial institutes are being forced to re-examine the strengths of their own brand strategies.
In the past, banks and financial services companies spent little time and money on marketing activities. With tight regulations, they focussed attention on their traditional markets, avoiding competing on any other levels.

For the full article, please refer to the 05-05-05 edition of Marketing Magazine, issue 144.

be the brand experience launches a tailor made MRM toolkit for Financial Services Industry

be the brand experience have released their latest industry customised solution. The unique challenges faced by marketers, compliance officers and agencies in the Financial Services (FS) market require an MRM solution that manages the financial promotion literature creation and approval process, automates the job-bag/ archiving process and manages item availability/ withdrawal dates. Automating the literature approval across multiple locations delivers reduced cycle time increased visibility. The solution also captures all approvals and sign off given for items - providing a comprehensive audit trail to help meet FSA guidelines.

With the Financial Services MRM toolkit, FS clients will be closer to having an off-the-shelf MRM solution that meets their industry needs without requiring significant customisation during the deployment; reducing the time and cost of set-up and deployment compared to starting with a vanilla MRM solution.

With Prudential UK, UIA and Winterthur live as well as 2 other top 10 FS providers in deployment and other large UK Financial Services clients in the pipeline, be the brand experience has established its credentials providing a market beating MRM solution within the FS sector.

Please contact busdev@be-thebrand.com for further information on our various off the shelf toolkits and customised solutions.