Leading UK Building Society supports 4, 500 colleague and 3.3 million customers with new agile marketing operations platform 

Yorkshire Building Society (YBS), the UK’s second largest building society, is reaping the benefits of a new automated approach to marketing operations following its selection of  Aprimo, a global leader in marketing operations software solutions. YBS completed its first project on the new marketing operations platform in November last year.

Based in Bradford and employing 4,500 staff across a nationwide network of 208 branches all serving over 3.3 million customers, the selection of a new marketing operations platform was a major strategic decision for YBS. “Cultural fit is very important to YBS and is one of the assessment criteria we apply when choosing a supplier,” explains Matthew Cox, Customer Strategy and Planning Manager at YBS. “Aprimo has proved to be a true partner, with great account support and has helped, supported and advised us on best practice methodology to get the most value from the Aprimo platform.”

At YBS, Aprimo is being used within the Product Development, Marketing & e-Commerce functions to support the creation, approval and management of Financial Promotions and other assets prepared by these teams. The approval of marketing content across all brands and all product lines is supported through Aprimo.

Already, YBS reports that Aprimo has enabled it to standardise and streamline marketing processes across the entire organisation. It has enabled the design of approved workflows that are re-usable across different teams, whilst still supporting the specific needs of individual departments.

Aprimo supports and enhances YBS’ marketing operations on a number of fronts, including an improved audit trail and oversight of all aspects of financial promotions, together with streamlined workflows with clearly defined roles and responsibilities within the process. YBS reports that Aprimo is proving to be transformative in evolving the nature of marketing operations management roles at various levels throughout the organisation, assisting process improvement and delivering efficiency.

Aprimo simplifies financial compliance at YBS
One significant area where Aprimo is helping YBS evolve its operations is compliance with financial regulations. “Ensuring we have an accurate record of all supporting documents and an audit trail of the approvals process for Financial Promotions was a key driver for the introduction of Aprimo,” explains Matthew Cox. “Aprimo gives us the ability to mandate that certain documents are in place before an item can go through the approval process, and that a  standardised approach to the sign off process is followed by all. The ability to automatically record comments throughout the process and who ultimately has signed off an item is invaluable to help us manage our Financial Promotion approvals process. It keeps our audit teams happy, safe in the knowledge that we have a tight grip on this key business process.“