Case study: CMP Information

CMP Information is an international publisher and events organiser.  CMPi delivers targeted integrated business media solutions to around 20 industry sectors. CMPi is a division of United Business Media plc. UBM is a market-focused information group with leading positions in high-growth business-to-business markets.

CMPi is headquartered in the UK with businesses in the USA and Europe. Its markets include: Construction and Architecture, Commercial Property, Food and Pharma Ingredients, Security, Interiors and Licensed Trade.

Each vertical market has industry specific solutions with systems to support:

• Placement of advertisements
• Industry focused directories
• Exhibition management, both exhibitors & visitors
• Journal readership, both controlled circulation and paid subscriptions
• Readership enquiry services
• Web based products

Like many big organisations, each part of the business operates almost independently of the others. Each unit has its own separate business systems to support their activities.

The management team, recognised they were not leveraging the strengths of their vast media empire. They sort external assistance from one of the big 4 consultancies.

One of the observations, within a lengthy report, was "there were probably cross-sell and up-sell opportunities" and CMPi should seek to capitalise on them.

CMPi has 100's of thousands of contacts and organisations and a large number of publications and events. With data in many independent systems, the scale of the problem was immense.

Solution

Considering the dynamics of each market, the approach was to focus on a single market. Subsequently the approach was repeated for each market on a priority basis.

A Business Opportunity Assessment™ was undertaken to:

• Appraise quality of each data source, advertisements, directories, etc
• Identify significant behaviours regarding companies that visit, exhibit and advertise or combinations there of
• Identify key performers and appraise their relationship across all activities
• Quantify the cross-sell and up-sell potential

External information, media monitoring data from AC Nielsen was incorporated into the analysis. The additional data provided insight into customer buying patterns with CMPi’s competitors. This made possible the comparison of CMPi products and services along side its competitors.

Benefits

With the media market being so competitive a key imperative was the rapid delivery results, ensuring that CMPi could take advantage of the opportunities at the best possible time. The project results delivered:

• 360° view of contacts and identified best customers, potential churn and other business opportunities
• Insight into CMPi's best customers, they were not as expected - Sales objectives were changed to attack competitor activity
• An immediate sponsorship “small business forum” yielded a £25k opportunity; a contingent of exhibition visitors never visited stands
• Key exhibitors “playing” the system? - resulted in a reduced business risk through improved business processes
• The results were delivered faster and cheaper than the incumbent consultancy

Find out more about CMP Information