KANTAR is a global leader in data, insights, and consulting, providing a comprehensive range of services to businesses understand and act on market trends and consumer behaviour. Kantar MEA is the division of Kantar that focuses on the Middle East and Africa regions. In this case study, Leon Bodha, Business optimisation team director for the Middle East & Africa branch of Kantar, shares how Kantar MEA has transformed their reporting infrastructure by leveraging E-Tabs’ flagship report automation product, E-Tabs Enterprise!
When Kantar MEA Met E-Tabs
In 2005, Kantar invested in E-Tabs automation solutions and were trained on the flagship product, E-Tabs Enterprise. Kantar discovered Enterprise was a powerful tool that could save time and cost on their report creation. Over the years, Kantar has developed a large team of experts, primarily dedicated to delivering large scale tracker work using E-Tabs Enterprise. Leon explains that, “whether it was wave on wave or month on month, as long as the data was standard or the structure of the data didn’t change, E-Tabs Enterprise was the tool that helped us deliver, and cut down timings.”
As the business grew, “E-Tabs was selected as the standard charting tool for Kantar globally.” Kantar’s Global Delivery Centre (GDC) adopted E-Tabs Enterprise to deliver automated outputs in PowerPoint and other formats. The tool has helped them maintain their focus on delivering time saving efficiencies on trackers and repetitive reports.
“OUR GOAL IS TO HAVE 100% OF ALL OUR CONTINUOUS AND TRACKER WORK AUTOMATED THROUGH E-TABS ENTERPRISE.”
Leon Bodha,
Business Optimisation Team Director, Kantar MEA
Kantar’s APPROACH TO SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENT AUTOMATION
Kantar are constantly striving to increase efficiencies and improve their reporting output. This is why they have achieved incredible results in report automation. Leon shared Kantar’s three pronged approach to successfully implement report automation:
1) PEOPLE – INVESTING IN EXPERTISE, TRAINING, AND MINDSET
Kantar MEA’s report automation success is rooted in how they invest in their employees to become report automation experts. Leon told us that Kantar focus on, “learning, growing, and understanding the tool, and complexity of many projects, and tracking work to be able to deliver the best, and the most efficient outputs from tracking work.”
Kantar created teams dedicated to implementing E-Tabs Enterprise into their reporting process. We invested in people by building their expertise through training. “The E-Tabs team actually came down to South Africa to train us first-hand. E-Tabs continue to provide ongoing training, to refresh the skills, and keep us upskilled which was a large part of the success.”
Leon details the ideal mindset of the type of people for Kantar’s expert report automation teams – “The mindset of someone who is really invested in continuously improving and using E-Tabs to its fullest potential – this is a charting, automation expert who would go back and review that job so the learnings are taken into the next job.”
2) PARTNERSHIP – SUPPORT FROM E-TABS, PARTNERING WITH INTERNAL TEAMS
The first partnership that Leon noted is between Kantar and the E-Tabs’ support team. “The E-Tabs support team has always been fantastic. They are always available to look at complex projects we have trouble with, to help us solve them, along with the trainings.”
Another key partnership is between Kantar’s internal teams. Leon clarifies, “This includes both In-Market Data teams and Global Delivery teams who understand the output.” Kantar’s data teams are able to understand the importance of consistency across as many waves as you run a project. “As long as there is not much change wave on wave. It is literally hitting the button.” Sharing their knowledge enables the teams to better keep those skills updated, and to improve the work that we do.
3) PLANNING – IS THE PROJECT FEASIBLE?
Leon tells us that “Planning is essential. It might sound obvious, but not all studies are feasible for automation, and there are criteria that have to be met. You’ve got to understand, if there is an opportunity for automation, and if there is standardisation – i.e. standard templates, data structures to 70% or 80% consistent wave on wave to be able to automate, that’s the kind of percentage we use to determine if it is feasible for automation.”
He continues, “you should set up for potential changes. Every job is different, and depending on the complexity, setting it up in a way that if there’s change in future, then E-Tabs Enterprise can accommodate for that. It has that ability and functionality to set up a project that accommodates for a certain degree of change, and that comes with partnering with your client service teams, being able to understand that, and what that output is going to be.
BENEFITS
Time SAVINGS
The first benefit that came to Leon’s mind was “obviously time saving.” He explained, “If set up correctly, it’s literally hitting the button wave on wave. Your time is spent upfront setting up, but the benefits are gained month on month, wave on wave, or whatever the frequency may be. You want that time saving in order to give those teams that were manually charting or putting in inputs, more time for high value tasks instead.”
COST SAVINGS
The second is, cost saving. “If you’re licensing the software, we have found over the years that the trade-off between acquiring a license and the time saved is quite significant.” The type of work Leon’s team reports on consists of “tons of slides” which could be run on a total level, they could be run across different categories or different segments, etc. So someone is having to constantly repeat the manually charting. “So it’s a significant amount of internal time and salary costs etc, or outsourcing costs for people to chart as previously, when instead it could be done internally using E-Tabs Enterprise, and you’d save that cost.”
IMPROVED QUALITY
One benefit Leon assures us of is quality assurance, “Certainly, improved quality is one of them due to standardisation and the data being refreshed on every run.” He explains, “You will get improved quality because human error is certainly something that’s quite prevalent when you’re doing charting manually”
Job Creation
Leon addresses the common concern with automation, “Is report automation going to replace jobs?” Leon tells us that “In Kantar, we found that it actually creates job opportunities within roles. It brings more excitement as it introduces a new skill set for someone to learn. This goes back to our investment in people, and cultivating the mindset of embracing innovation to continuously improve the outputs of delivery to clients or whoever your stakeholders may be.”
Bottomline
When you find the right solution, optimise your implementation to get the best results. Kantar MEA have invested in their reporting infrastructure to make sure the power of E-Tabs Enterprise is being utilised to its fullest potential. Not only have Kantar MEA invested in their employee’s technical skills but they have also cultivated a culture that constantly strive to increase efficiencies in their reporting. This has resulted in major benefits including time savings, cost savings, and reporting data quality.
Explore E-Tabs Enterprise Yourself!
See how E-Tabs Enterprise can innovate your Market Research reporting, just like Kantar MEA!
Click here to learn more about E-Tabs Enterprise.
Watch Leon Bodha and Benjamin Rietti share how kantar saved 80% in report creation time with E-Tabs Enterprise: