Vital interim support and leadership for Marketing Cheshire

Recruiting a new managing director and head of marketing takes time, but in the interim, Marketing Cheshire was missing two key roles which set the direction of the organisation, providing leadership and expertise.

BACKGROUND

Marketing Cheshire is the sub-region’s Destination Management Organisation and official tourist board for Chester, Cheshire & Warrington. It is responsible for positioning Cheshire as a great place to live, work, study, invest and visit, and was initially part of the Cheshire and Warrington LEP (Local Enterprise Partnership). It operates as a publicly supported, non-profit organisation.

The organisation works in partnership with three local authorities and tourism and hospitality businesses and there was a risk of losing core members and funding without appropriate leadership. So, it put out a tender for a consultancy team that could cover both roles.

WHAT WE DID

The Assembly Line, working with Oneday Ltd led a consultancy team covering senior roles while recruitment was underway for a Managing Director & Head of Marketing.

As a result of Marketing Cheshire commissioning an interim consultancy team rather than two individuals to cover the role, it benefitted from a much wider breadth of expertise from our team, who knew the area and could rapidly get up to speed.

• We managed key partners with different priorities while maintaining relationships against a risk of losing core members and funding without appropriate leadership being in place.
• We undertook a number of reviews and streamlined projects to improve efficiency and effectiveness. These included: a funding and delivery review, stakeholder engagement with their members to develop a proposed structure for the organisation and its partners for the next five years (as Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) were disbanded) and a commercial review considering the packages sold and profitability.
• In addition to day-to-day team management and regular reporting to the CEO and LEP board, we created a set of KPIs by which the organisation could be measured.
• Simplified service level agreements (SLAs) were also developed to enable a clearer understanding of responsibilities and easier assessment. A similar approach was taken for reporting and our work helped highlight the most useful data and made priorities and progress clearer.
• We helped Marketing Cheshire meet the deadline and achieve LVEP status and produced the Growth Action Plan.
• Our interim governance of the organisation, alongside a strategic and structural review, ensured it was in a strong position for the incoming MD and Head of Marketing.

WHAT OUR CLIENT SAID