FutureBrand is the global branding subsidiary of the multi-billion dollar Interpublic Group (IPG – NYSE) – one of the world’s largest advertising agencies. They are responsible for the recent re-branding of United Parcel Service (UPS); they developed the Microsoft Butterfly; they do all global branding for British Airways and many other prestigious clients.
FutureBrand had been working on internal development of their own portal for over two years before they approached Webauthor. By working with Webauthor they were able to introduce a finished product to their global audience less than three months later.
Originally FutureBrand intended to hire their own programmers to handle on-going development for their portal. However, after working with Webauthor on the initial roll out they cancelled those plans and have been our clients since 2001. We are now working on the third iteration of FutureBrand’s customized portal.
One of the major problems our portal helped solve is moving graphical projects around the world to allow for 24 hour a day work on major branding projects. Before the portal was developed they relied on huge E-mail attachments. We have now built a custom document center that allows developers in New York, Hong Kong, and London to collaborate on projects with no impact on FutureBrand’s WAN.
In the years we have worked with the FutureBrand Company they have called on us to leverage the initial functionality of their portal by building additional new functionality. One example of this work is an automated help desk tool designed to assist in supporting their global technical environment. Now, any associate worldwide can go to this simple interface to report a technical issue.
Behind the scenes each trouble ticket is processed and tracked until resolved. Not only has this allowed for better and more timely customer service but the management of the technical departments at FutureBrand can now monitor the overall “health” of their technical environment and evaluate the responsiveness of their technical services.
Another extension to the help desk function is a comprehensive asset tracking solution that allows the global IT resources of FutureBrand to be quickly and easily tracked, monitored, and evaluated.
Beyond the help desk function we have also built and deployed a sales tracking tool for the FutureBrand Finance Department. The sales tracking pipeline application allows sales reps from all over the world to report on potential revenue from prospective and current clients. Each month, revenue data is imported from the ERP system to compare to the forecasted numbers. This granular information allows the management of The FutureBrand Company to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of their global sales force and the penetration into their prospective client base.
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