CASE STUDY

Take it to the House: Cella Designs an Award-Winning Managed In-House Agency

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Our oil and gas client needed a flexible staffing model that could adjust to changing oil prices that impacted the marketing and creative department’s budget. As a result, the small number of staff were not enough to keep up with demand and execute deliverables on time or at scale. The client chose Cella by Randstad to help them build a managed in-house agency (MIA) based on an ideal value model our experts created to address their unique challenges.

Cella’s team identified the ideal operational and creative resources that were needed to support the client’s ever-growing work. On day one, we established leadership structures and assembled a team of 42 top digital, marketing and creative professionals. This “one team” approach was established by assembling a core group of professionals and integrating a digital media team within it who were the key to what the client had been missing.

Flash forward: In a three-year period, the MIA that Cella crafted and established created $20M in savings for the client with the capacity for increased work volume because of efficiencies and strategic execution. The studio became an award-winning in-house agency studio under its own brand name and has established itself as the gold standard for servicing oil and gas industry clients.

The Problem

After this leading oil and gas company had attended a number of our industry thought leadership and professional development events, we fostered a relationship with them and gained insight into their company’s specific challenges (not enough staff and production support to execute on deliverables) and needs (the ability to deliver same-day service, plus expanding capabilities and capacity).

The client was handling a trifecta of concerns: Costs were a significant consideration and staff shortages meant they didn’t have the capacity to meet demand and execute on quality deliverables on time or at scale.

Cella’s consultative approach and deep knowledge of our client’s unique business helped us define the answer: creating an agile, managed in-house agency (MIA) to help them meet the ongoing ebbs and flows of the oil industry without compromising the budget, quality or speed of their output.

The Solution

Our Consulting pros applied their industry knowledge and expertise to custom-design an in-house agency model that fit our oil and gas client’s needs. Our on-the-ground understanding of the client’s specific challenges informed our process. We listened to them and created a plan to establish a studio with digital, marketing and creative teams that could strengthen and expand their abilities through bringing on the right people, processes and technology. All these things combined had the potential to generate financial stability as well, even in changing circumstances.

To ensure the MIA established best practices to maintain a strong operational structure and focus, Cella added a layer of operations management, including a Project Management Team Lead. This leader developed project management capabilities using Workfront, established SLAs and established processes to help the team focus on its commitment to elevated customer service, account strategy and executional standards. To complement this service, roles focused on Change Management, Quality Control and Data Asset Management added to the studio’s capabilities, refining the operational process and strengthening its efficiency.

We equipped the studio to expand its digital offering with video services, which became the centerpiece of their outreach:

Our Consulting pros applied their industry knowledge and expertise to custom-design an in-house agency model that fit our oil and gas client’s needs.

Focusing on engaging social media presence with curated content

Rebuilding the corporate website

Adding training and development platforms with discipline-specific modules to educate their workforce around the globe

Translation services

In a collaborative effort, Cella’s consultants and its learning and development experts provided guidance, in cooperation with the Studio Director, to help the studio adapt to organizational changes, understand emerging business challenges and make recommendations.

Built to Last

Cella’s team of consultants were able to look ahead and anticipate the next level of growth for our client. They were prepared with a plan to accelerate our agile approach with a proven industry standard – the pod model – with mini teams focusing on a specific business unit. As Covid came to the fore in 2020, it was evident their instincts had been right, and our client recognized that adopting this model made the most sense for their business. Our experts guided the managed in-house agency in establishing an effective remote work model and a comprehensive game plan based on our industry expertise to implement seamless operational improvements.

To say it was a success is an understatement.

The pod model exceeded all expectations, and the client’s leadership agreed the agency should become its own entity — an extended in-house agency team working in a unified process toward a singular goal. With its own new brand name, the agency established a full set of micro teams made up of digital, marketing and creative experts assigned to support specific lines of business. By the end of 2020, a newsroom media outlet, public relations and legal review services were ensconced in the agency, steering the corporation’s message and image.

The studio has since become the go-to resource for the client’s organization, transforming into a comprehensive agency service with a custom solution for every need.

By leveraging Cella’s industry expertise through operational improvements, capacity for efficiencies, on-target staffing choices and best practices, the MIA enabled our client to realize a $20M cost savings over the course of three years. Today, the agency has become the gold standard for its industry, proving what a top-to-bottom enterprise-wide transformation can do to drive functional excellence and stay competitive in an ever-changing environment.

And we’re just getting started.

The Results

Cella created an agile managed in-house agency model based on our client’s unique business. By getting to know the dynamics of their industry well and defining actionable solutions for their pain points, our custom-crafted MIA structure has resulted in $20M in cost savings for our client. Today, the managed in-house agency has doubled, growing from a core team to a multi-tiered organizational structure that has the confidence of its stakeholders and consistently produces high-quality award-winning work. After a near decade-long relationship, we are still listening to them to develop services that can grow with their business.

In 2022, the agency took its first steps to establish a global presence as its service expanded to Singapore to allow for an always-on, 24-hour production service. This global environment facilitates the capability for global reach as well as location-specific news and content. Cella by Randstad Digital’s parent company provides a partnership structure that will enable an expansion of global capabilities and services, continually increasing productivity, quality and cost savings.

Next stop: The world.