Insights dated January 2020

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.