A word from our new Managing Partner, David Sheridan
Our ambition in London is to develop an outsourcing model similar to the successful business models of many Indian businesses of the past decade.
Those of you who have read ‘The World is Flat – A Brief History of the 21st Century’ (Thomas L.Friedman – published by Farrar,Stauss and Giroux) will have a greater appreciation of the concept of ‘globalization’ than those who have not. If you are a ‘have not’ I urge you to make time to read it immediately.
What Flip Holdings has achieved as a Middle Eastern start-up opening a representative office in London is a perfect example of the ‘flattening’ process. Technology, and in particular the low cost availability of reliable broadband internet connection to India, means that a company of 100 skilled digital communications experts from the ME and sub-continent can compete with the best in the world …. and win.
Our ambition in London is to develop an outsourcing model similar to the successful business models of many Indian businesses of the past decade. It has already proved hugely successful for, among others, the IT, Finance, Telecoms, Healthcare and Retail sectors – why not for digital communications?
Our business model is typical of the outsourcing industry that has helped shape the fast growing economy of India and which is driven by India’s commendable investment in IT education over the past 15 years. London, a traditional hive of creative energy in marketing communications, is now a world leader in online strategic development and creativity. Flip Holdings creative strength in the UAE is self-evident but we do not presume to compete with London’s best on their own turf. We’d rather play to our own strengths. Our model, therefore, is to offer back-end services to this fast growing market. A combination of our best-in-class proprietary products and significantly lower labour costs makes Flip Holdings a truly exciting proposition as a support service offering to the UK digital industry.
Our size and lean management structure continue to allow us to develop and update our work-flow systems ahead of those in general use today. Navitask (our web-based project, document and message management suite), Chameleon (our Content Management System) and Brand Central (an adserving and online media planning, buying and management system) already serve the daily needs of over 110 active clients and agencies worldwide. These include direct clients, independent SME agencies and the major internationals such as WPP, Omnicom and Publicis.
Our outsourcing model in London is dependent on a clear delineation of the roles between the UK entities we serve and our scope of work. We make it very clear to the agencies we pitch to that we are NOT offering creative origination or strategy / media planning; we emphasize that we have NO desire to poach their clients. On seeing this chart the agency boss usually breaths an audible sigh of relief, leans forward with renewed interest and asks what it is we can do and how this will make his agency more profitable.
Our answer is simple. We can manage and execute all digital production, delivery, optimization and reporting through our offices in India and Dubai. We can do this at typically 50% of UK costs and in a time frame up to 30% faster. We have Quality Assurance (QA) built into our systems at every key stage of a user friendly yet meticulous work flow system and we allow, indeed encourage, the UK agencies to log in to our systems and become an integral part of the progress. ‘Control ‘of each project remains entirely with the agency.
Flip Holdings companies need never be revealed to the client. From resizing or translation of a simple banner to complex web development in multiple languages and using the latest flash technologies – Flip Holdings has the capability. With digital media we can take an agency’s media plan and traffic it using either a 3rd party adserve solution (e.g. DoubleClick or Atlas) or our own Brand Central. Quality reports covering every conceivable aspect of a digital campaign can be produced in real time with impressive on-the-fly graphics.
To an industry struggling with the interconnected problems of making digital profitable and a digital skills shortage we are manna from heaven. We have had a wonderful reception in London with business already starting to flow. A proven business model here in London will soon lead to more adventures in Europe and across the Atlantic. Our recruitment drive in the ME and India to serve this ‘flattened’ world has already begun.
