We worked with Ashford Borough Council to respond to challenging targets due to the financial impact the pandemic had and support their wider commercial development.

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Sprint Review and Route Map

We undertook a sprint review of the commercial opportunities at Ashford.  This involved meetings with 13 service teams over a three-day period followed by research looking into their service areas.  This stage was done over a few days, building on our experience of similar initiatives in other authorities to quickly identify when an unrealised opportunity existed.  These opportunities were classified together with an estimate of the market potential to enable quick decision making on how to move forward.  Following on from this review we developed a route map to identify when and how commercial initiatives should be invested in and focused on to achieve the desired objectives. 

 

Commercial Strategy and Framework

We wrote a three year commercial strategy and developed a commercial framework to help manage existing commercial initiatives and new ideas.  This framework helps service managers and other staff to think about key commercial questions and areas of analysis and allows the commercial board at Ashford to compare opportunities against each other to determine where the best ROI can be found. 

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Training

We ran a series of training events for staff and elected members to develop their commercial awareness and commercial skills and, through the training, familiarise them with the commercial framework.  The training was for two staff cohorts: the senior management team and head of service with other key commercial officers.  In total around 30 staff and 12 members received training. 

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Marketing Plan and Implementation

We then developed marketing plans for two services which high commercial potential: the Lifeline Service and CCTV.  These were developed alongside key staff, helping them to understand how to develop a good marketing plan and further increased the pool of skilled commercial officer in ABC.  We also supported the initial implementation of the marketing plans. 

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Culture Change

It was identified early on that culture change is an important part of the commercial development process.  This became especially apparent during lockdown where the council achieved fantastic results with staff empowered to work in new and different ways.  We ran a culture change project with Ashford, identifying the existing culture and what changed during lockdown. We then looked at the culture needed to thrive in the current and future operating environments and finally identified actions that will bridge the gap from one to another. This process completed over a four week period, involved around 100 staff to ensure good buy in to the process.

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