Online magazine on rollerblading for skating enthusiasts gets a revival

Results at a glance

Talent

Available at competitive costs

Sales

Increased 32%

Geographical Reach

Expanded by nine states

Comprehensive magazine covering all facets of the sport, including events, news, and shopping, and catering to the interests of enthusiasts of all levels.

Background

Our customer is a magazine publisher dedicated to rollerblading, also known as inline skating. Although the sport is popular across news portals, fitness and lifestyle magazines and websites, there are very few platforms dedicated to true skating lovers. Our customer’s comprehensive magazine covers all facets of the sport, including events, news, and shopping, and caters to the interests of enthusiasts of all levels. Initial enthusiasm in this service started waning over time due to the sustained effort required to produce a high quality magazine, and this was reflected in stagnant sales over a period of time. Our customer heard about TransForm through an online platform and hired us to help with his business challenge. TransForm quickly conducted a feasibility study to gather the customer’s requirements. We then assigned a dedicated Project Manager and Virtual Assistant (VA) to understand the business processes and pain points, and crafted a strategy to address them.

Challenges

Based on the requirements gathering and feasibility study, it was evident that the customer’s main issue was an acute lack of quality manpower. The existing staff was over-utilized, resulting in quality dips. This put pressure in launching new initiatives and crafting new go-to-market strategies. Chiefly, our customer faced the following issues: Difficulty in hiring technical and admin staff in a highly competitive job market Constraints in utilizing existing workforce due to involvement in current initiatives Inability to start new initiatives in time to gain competitive advantage in the market

Solutions

Our customer briefed us on task outlines. After reviewing these, the dedicated VA sent task samples to the customer for its review. Changes to these were suggested by the customer. This provided a cognitive input to the VA, and the whole exercise resulted in cognitive learning and insights.

Over a few weeks, more VAs were trained to perform the business processes. They took over non-core responsibilities, allowing the customer’s staff to focus on the core business needs.

In addition to handling tasks such as web research, invoicing, blogging and record keeping, TransForm created an instructional training document to be used to train future employees. The training manual helped standardize procedures and eliminated the need for manual intervention by the customer in future training programs.

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Results

Synergy with our customer brought transformational changes to its business processes. Apart from qualitative benefits, our customer recorded several quantitative benefits, such as:

Increased efficiency by 2x as a result of a dedicated virtual assistant team
Talent availability at competitive costs
Jump of 32% in sales figures over the past 2 years
Expanded geographical reach by 9 states as a result of quality manpower being available whenever required

With TransForm’s collaboration at every step, our customer is confident of growing its business and expanding its footprint rapidly over the coming years.

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