Adelphia
Case Study
Adelphia Communications
Adelphia Communications recognized that keeping up with the volatile world of cable television channels and customer communications could be significantly improved. The previous process of maintaining and printing of local "Welcome Kits" and channel line up information for consumers was done by each local system operator. This resulted in high costs, slow turnaround time and inefficiency. To improve all aspects of this process, Adelphia approached their agency, Sullivan Direct, and JGSullivan to create a new system that maintained all the benefits of decentralization but leveraged economies of scale and consistency of brand.
Client Profile
- Industry: Cable and Communications Provider
- Products: Cable and Internet access
Challenges
- Slow to print new materials. The series of manual steps required to update and re-print revised channel line ups was particularly slow, cumbersome and prone to human error. Occasionally, materials would even go out-of-date before they were ever distributed.
- Lack of single, authoritative database. Adelphia grew through acquisitions and the old methods of maintaining channel or pricing information was ad hoc and inconsistent. Adelphia had no centralized database of this valuable information.
- Costly to print. Because each local cable system handled its own printing and production, overhead costs were multiplied across the company. There were no economies of scale whatsoever.
JGSullivan's Approach
- Standardize and consolidate the data. With a consistent, coherent database of all the channel and pricing information, all parties have the flexibility to create and output materials without the significant manual effort previously required. Plus the centralized database gives corporate management access to valuable data about channels and pricing that was difficult or impossible to analyze previously.
- Retain the benefits of decentralization. The people that know the information are in the local offices, so the tools to keep the database up-to-date are available to those key local resources that know the information and have a vested interest in keeping it current.
- Create print templates to work with all locations. Working with Sullivan Direct, we created templates that worked with small channel line ups (one panel, single sided) to huge channel line ups (four panels, double sided). The tool automatically picks the correct size and layout based on data available. Thus, each cable system gets a tailored product, but the system is still automated.
Results
- Data consistency. The centralized database provides the infrastructure for holding the normalized data and provides an infrastructure for keeping things normalized.
- Reduced printing costs, speed production. By using one print vendor and standardizing templates, the cost per run has been significantly reduced. At the same time, the production cycle has been reduced from months to weeks.
- Highly extensible platform for future projects. Adelphia now has a wealth of information about channel and pricing information in a single repository. This investment in collecting and cleansing the data enables future projects to be developed at a fraction of the cost.
