SponServe, the Australia based company that offers rights holders and sponsors a new way to effectively manage their relationships, recently opened a UK office. We speak to Alex Hay (UK GM) and Mark Thompson (Founder & MD) about why this is such a key issue.
Tell us a little bit about SponServe (and give some info about the UK market that you’ve recently entered)
SponServe is a cloud based, sponsorship management platform which both rights holders and brands can use to gain complete oversight and management of their relationships. For rights holders, they can use SponServe for the full life-cycle of a sponsorship, all the way from lead tracking, proposal, confirmation, management and delivery and then reporting and acquittal. For brands, they achieve complete oversight of what benefits have and haven’t been delivered and how they are tracking towards the overall marketing objectives.
SponServe is an Australian company and opened an office in London in November 2016. The UK (and Europe) was identified as the priority expansion market for the business, given the diversity and pure number of rights holders which exist, as well as the fast evolution being experienced within the sponsorship industry in the UK. This is something that SponServe is designed to help manage.
From a rights holder’s perspective, what are the main benefits of the tool, and how can it add value to their commercial agreements?
Our main focus at SponServe, from a rights holder’s point of view, is to alleviate the common pain-points in day to day sponsorship or commercial management. The key areas include:
- Increased time to drive maximum value from relationships
- Increased time to identify sponsorship property gaps and secure new sponsorship agreements
- Streamlined administration processes
- Streamlined review and reporting processes, including fulfilment of benefits within agreements
- Relationship profiles with ability to manage sponsor objectives, cash and VIK arrangements
- Integrated Rights Holder/Brand WIP, notes and attachment portal
- Targeted business development opportunities
- Reduction in knowledge loss during staff turnover
- Manage in the field with unique SponServe mobile application
What “light bulb” moments have come up from rights holders when they’ve started using the tool?
SponServe is being used as an instant “deal checker” and provides immediate oversight as to the cost of a relationship vs income – whilst highlighting which benefits are contributing to those costs in an individual manner. The deal checker has resulted in one top tier professional sport in Australia increasing their commercial profits by 20% in their first year with this analysis. At the community level, one not-for-profit user identified that they were losing money on 20% of their partnerships, whilst others were receiving much more value in benefits to what they were paying OR would be acceptable at an ROI level. So the tool has really allowed our partners to gain a good financial overview of their business and react accordingly, something they weren’t able to do before.
What benefits does using the software bring to a sponsor / brand?
SponServe’s main focus from a brand perspective is to give them better oversight over their entire program, with information and reports readily available to them. Key areas of the brands system include:
- Managing benefits across multiple countries or regions while still having full oversight
- Tracking activation costs on a benefit by benefit basis
- Tracking the success of ROI across various sponsorships
- Sharing of files with rights holders including logos, style guides etc
- Being able to track what benefits have been delivered/not delivered at any given time
- Oversight over a full schedule of upcoming benefits to enable better activation of available benefits
What “light bulb” moments have brands experienced when using it?
Brands have been identified as using only a small number of contracted benefits they are given within a partnership, let alone using those strategically as part of their marketing mix. Brands using the system are able to immediately integrate their sponsorship portfolio with their marketing activity to drive greater value, whilst also realising the amount of wasted time they spend on administering, rather than leveraging, their sponsorship programs. Having this visibility, and being able to divert valuable resources to a specific part of a campaign or activation, is proving to be extremely valuable and increases the ROI even further.
How do you see a tool such as SponServe improving the commercial relationships between a sponsor and a rights holder?
If both a rights holder and their brand(s) are on SponServe, the system acts as a communication portal. The system pulls selected data through from the rights holder to the brand. This information includes the fee, any value in kind, the total value of the benefits to be delivered across the partnership, the value of the delivered benefits to date and the benefits themselves. The rights holder controls what information is visible to the brand, but can also opt to share attachments, notes and request information through the system making it a one stop shop when managing your commercial partnerships, creating a trackable and auditable WIP process that both parties can work on simultaneously.
With the system automatically providing a schedule of benefits, reporting on what benefits have been delivered along with any associated delivery notes, it allows the rights holder and the brand to build a stronger relationship, using the time which is currently spent on transactional and administrative elements to be re-focused on building and creating mutually beneficial relationships, concentrating on effective activation and successful partnerships.
How do you see SponServe benefiting sponsorship as a whole, and what industry wide changes could this kind of relationship and inventory management system bring about in the future?
Sponsorship professionals, on both sides, face numerous challenges which are a direct result of using ill-suited tools such as spreadsheets, or software not built for sponsorship. This is a generic problem across the overwhelming majority of organisations worldwide. The day-to-day problems this creates include:
- excessive time spent on administration
- a lack of time to sell during key periods
- a lack of time to strengthen existing relationships
- risk of not delivering / receiving contracted benefits
- overselling benefits to a sponsor where stock is limited
- inability to record delivery of benefits as they occur
- ability to report progress and success on sponsorships and
- knowledge loss during staff-turnover
Sponsorship is a unique industry which deserves a dedicated platform to accommodate the unique processes that surround partnerships. These processes are not effectively accommodated with other “sales” based systems and as such, SponServe is a dedicated tool for this industry.
By having systems such as ours, the industry can move towards better commercial and governance practices, bringing organisations closer to best-practice management. We’re helping organisations with consistency of language, total oversight of commercial opportunities and, ultimately, growth.
What’s been the most impressive result / use case of the software to date?
We recently conducted a survey of our rights holder clients who have been on the system for over 12 months. With this depth of data available to us we were able to see the following results:
- + 35% growth in Portfolio Value due to better commercial oversight
- + 79% increase in the confidence of their sponsorship program
- + 41% Pre-Season time saving through use of SponServe’s functionality
- + 50% time saved on administrative functions for week to week pre-event preparation