Rather than posting another article about the world of copywriting, I’ve decided to do something a bit different.
Copywriting is more than just creating sales and marketing content. It also covers areas such as internal communications and training materials. That’s why I have decided to share this case study with you.
Case study: Redesigning and re-writing the Willis Towers Watson Expertise Portal (Willis Re Division)
When your business is split between the UK and Mumbai, providing training and reference material that satisfies both audiences is a challenge.
The UK and India are countries that do things very differently; therefore understanding the needs of each audience is the first step to creating a knowledge base that satisfies both cultures.
Willis’s existing expertise portal had become a ‘dumping ground’. As and when updates occurred, emails and other documents were stored online without coherent version control. Therefore, it was impossible to work out which information was current.
As a result, process leads were overrun with queries from staff members.
The challenge was to create an ordered system that would encourage staff members to use the portal as their information source, rather than raising queries with line managers.
How the process worked
The first stage was to interview a selection of expertise portal users from both the UK and Mumbai. The results of which showed the UK team hardly used the portal because the information was difficult to find and it was quicker to ask for help. In contrast, the Mumbai team did make use of it, but without proper version control, they often discovered they were using out of date information, leading to errors.
With direct reference to Willis brand guidelines, I designed a series of easy to complete templates for the various document types required. This would then guarantee the sustainability of the new system.
Then, after reviewing the current information with the Directors to ensure I was working from the most up to date versions, I created a series of documents with version control.
The information was transformed from heavily text-based documents to an easy to follow graphic and text combination. Where possible, the content was simplified to satisfy the needs of the UK and Mumbai users.
As a result, the expertise portal was transformed into a valuable reference library.
“Sally has collaborated with us on a hugely successful project to help us modernise and rebrand a whole suite of process documentation. We are absolutely delighted at the results and have been left with a range of simple, easy to use templates which enable us to edit existing documents as changes occur, as well as being able to produce new content much more easily.” – Martyn Yellop, ACII, Associate Director, Willis Re
Working in collaboration
Every organisation needs high-quality content, but not every organisation has the expertise to convert its in-depth knowledge into compelling, engaging marketing collateral.
Call Sally Ormond today on +44(0)1449 79605, and she’ll produce cost-effective, exceptional collateral – always on delivered on time and within budget.