Customer Success Story
SAATCHI & SAATCHI
Saatchi & Saatchi Provides Globally Networked Ideas with BT Infonet
Saatchi & Saatchi is a pre-eminent global name in advertising. With over $3 billion in billings and employing over 5,000 people worldwide on many prestigious multinational accounts, the business has been highly successful and created many memorable award-winning campaigns. Familiar examples line the walls of their offices. The focus continues to be on creativity, the latest reinforcement being the definition of Saatchi & Saatchi as "the ideas company."
As with every business experiencing rapid global growth and expansion, Saatchi & Saatchi has been through several stages of systems and network development. Saatchi & Saatchi's global systems integration began in 1997 with a study for a network to interconnect existing regionally based systems using the Internet. Such integration is in itself a challenge between business units where accounts are highly individual and the solutions unique. Andrew Halstead, IT Director EMEA for Saatchi & Saatchi, took the responsibility.
Initially the applications were for the exchange of GroupWise e-mail, FTP file transfer for substantial graphic and digital video files, and to interconnect financial systems in key locations. "We tried the major brand names but no one could deliver the Internet solution we wanted, so we first tried a competitor's frame relay service. This proved both expensive and inflexible," says Halstead.
When Saatchi & Saatchi's regional IT directors met in June 1998 it was agreed that Saatchi & Saatchi needed a high-performance IP solution with global availability as soon as possible and the Wide Area Network (WAN) was made a core project. Whilst again researching the market, Saatchi & Saatchi saw GartnerGroup's "Red Flag: to Global Alliances" article, with its recommendation for BT Infonet, and contacted BT Infonet. A request for proposal was finally issued to four shortlisted suppliers. BT Infonet's Private Internet was a clear winner once it became evident that the competition could not offer the right combination of performance levels, coverage, service guarantees and value. Another convincing reason for BT Infonet's selection was its focus on closure at all stages, defining and delivering a flexible solution.
The current major development for Saatchi & Saatchi is the global BRAIN project. This is a Web-based system, which allows campaign ideas and information to be shared globally. This is in keeping with the corporate direction to maximise the benefits of globalisation - again, a very leading-edge approach in a business where individual creativity is almost the whole raison d'être. BRAIN allows details of past, present and future campaigns to be available to all; categorised in a number of ways, to co-ordinate the progress of these campaigns between agency and client, subject to rigorous security. BRAIN can also be used as a new business tool, allowing the best advertisements and learnings from each country to be replayed by anyone over the network. The demands of multimedia content-accessible anywhere by PC or Mac browser, was a deciding factor for a private IP network. Perhaps less obviously, the Private Internet comes into play most strongly in less developed countries, where BT Infonet can guarantee the necessary access speeds, not available on the local public Internet infrastructure.
These systems are becoming increasingly essential to business success and growth. They are server centric, and hence network dependent. Saatchi & Saatchi's goal is to leverage winning creative ideas globally on their network. "We can provide creative solutions from Sydney for a client in San Francisco with account management in London, if that is best for the client," says Halstead. "The challenge for IT is to create tools to match the business processes to realise this opportunity in a creative environment. A global network, which is always there, with the performance we expect, is absolutely fundamental to making this happen. So far we have gotten all we expected from BT Infonet."