The Challenge

Blender Media (Blender) is an award winning digital agency for public company known for inspiring investor confidence. Headquartered in Vancouver, Blender offers more than a decade of experience in digital Investor’s Relations. In 2017, Blender was facing unprecedented growth and had identified an opportunity in the market to create a new service offering.  Blender was seeking assistance to create capacity to facilitate the roll-out of a new product offering to expand the services offered to a new market segment. Blender engaged Propel to complete a Business Process Review to create capacity to meet future growth opportunities.  Blender sought to improve its project control and management systems to further improve the profitability of projects. This engagement required Propel to conduct an evaluation of the organization to review, optimize and standardize the flow of work; improve management systems; and deliver continued customer service excellence.

The Objectives

  • Process Review: Propel conducted a comprehensive review of the current processes within all departments including: Sales, Project Management, Design, Development, Customer Support and Finance. Our consultants worked with stakeholders to document current processes to illustrate how projects flow through the company from initial needs analysis to project completion and post-launch support. Propel facilitated functional and cross-functional critique sessions to uncover opportunities for process improvement.
  • Opportunity Identification: From stakeholder engagement and a review of business process improvement best practices, Propel conducted a Gap Analysis to identify required actions to address process variation, develop standards and suggest feasible alternatives to improve performance. Cross-functional process improvements were identified to improve the effectiveness of projects, target lost time and reduce lead time.
  • Design and Implementation of Recommendations: Propel designed the project to improve employee engagement throughout the project through increased visibility and understanding of how each function contributes to end-to-end processes. This prepared the organization for change. Corrective actions were prioritized and classified into short-term, medium-term and long-term implementation timelines for Blender to support its strategic objectives.
  • Development of a Management Toolkit: Propel’s Business Process Improvement team worked with managers to develop a comprehensive management toolkit with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure success on daily, weekly and monthly basis. This toolkit increased the visibility and control of key processes.

The Results                                                                                                                                                                   

The Project was known affectionately as project “Milkshake” with all employees contributing to the improvements in the organization. The project was completed on time and on budget in a 7-week timeline. The engagement provided Blender Media with process and service improvements through clearly defined roles and responsibilities, increased project control, and standardized procedures. Blender aligned functions to support the strategic growth objectives of the organization while launching their new product.