The AA is one of the UK's best-known and best-loved brands. When they wanted to enhance their procurement processes, they chose marketingunity.

Large organisations invariably have a huge demand for marketing collateral. Many have procurement personnel dedicated to servicing the needs of fast-paced marketing teams. One such company is the AA, which uses marketingunity to manage its marketing procurement process. As a direct result, it has streamlined the quotation process and generated substantial time and cost savings. 

The AA is the UK’s largest motoring organisation. It was formed in 1905 by a group of motoring enthusiasts who wanted to help other drivers to avoid police speed traps! Over the years it has developed considerably, and now has some 3,300 highly trained breakdown patrols serving millions of members. 

Because the AA produces a large amount of literature, it has a huge demand for print, mostly generated from marketing teams covering different business sectors. In 2004, the organisation started looking for a more effective business process that could cope with these diverse marketing requirements. In particular, it needed to be able to quickly obtain quotes and idenitify the best suppliers in each case: a complex, costly and time-consuming process when done manually.

Consistency and cost-effectiveness

Ryan Hennessey, the AA’s Procurement Manager, explains: "We needed a more consistent approach to the financial aspects of procurement and the associated reports. We wanted to be able to collate a range of marketing-related information in a consistent format so that we could report the financial details back into the business. Because we have so many different marketing jobs, we were also looking for opportunities for lumping jobs together to increase the cost-effectiveness of our procurement operations." 

The new system went live in April 2004. The AA worked closely with marketingunity so that the software could be tailored to meet its specific needs. Marketingunity has proved so effective that it is used to manage a wide range of work, including all of the organisation’s marketing print, direct mail, inserts, flyers and Point of Sale material. It handles some 1,000 jobs per year.

Speed and control

Ryan Hennessey continues: marketingunity has given us a much more defined and consistent business process that provides us with greater control over our marketing jobs and our preferred suppliers. It speeds up the whole process of producing quotes. 

"It has been well received by our network of approved suppliers, and also by our own marketing teams. A key benefit comes from repeat work: we can use marketingunity to copy an old job across very easily. It enables us to carry out repeat activities in a fraction of the time they used to take, saving a huge amount of administrative time and paperwork. It also allows us to provide our suppliers with a report on their performance information that helps both them and us." 

He concludes: "We wanted a powerful procurement package that would save time and money, and we found it in marketingunity. The system is robust, and marketingunity are always on hand to provide expert support."