In brief
- Turner needed to improve its time-consuming monthly reporting on its kids TV channels
- Monthly reports also needed to improve usability, flexibility, and to add online performance tracking
- Clusters created a dynamic automated monthly reporting combining TV and Net Ratings, and also consolidated a wide range of diverse local reports into a single EMEA report
- Clusters designed a dashboard allowing the research team to turn data into insights quickly and easily
- The new automated monthly reporting has more than halved the time needed to produce the report
Challenge
Turner is one of the world’s largest broadcasting companies, creating branded news, entertainment, kids, and sports media environments on TV and other platforms for consumers and viewers around the world.
Monthly reporting is a critical part of evaluating Turner’s international market position and the performance of its network and its key channels and programmes, as well as those of competitors. Reporting also helps monitor trends that inform buying and other critical commercial decisions across multiple markets. For Turner kids’ portfolio specifically – the channels Cartoon Network, Boing,
Boomerang and Cartoonito – there was a clear need to improve such reporting. Ranja Mohyieldin, Senior Research Manager, Kids at Turner Broadcasting explains, “With multiple channels, markets and franchises, the monthly reporting for Turner kids’ television took my team nearly two weeks to complete. With a growing number of key decision makers using the monthly report, we needed to find a way of making the process more efficient, as well as generating a report which encompassed the larger picture, was engaging and graphical so it could be of maximum use to our stakeholders and key decision makers.”
Solution
In 2014, Clusters created an automated monthly reporting template that is now being used to generate a monthly multi-country EMEA report for Turner kids’ TV. The template makes the monthly reports far easier to produce, as well as improving accuracy and flexibility.
Clusters’ report automation template takes large amounts of complex data from all Turner’s EMEA markets, and using a series of specially programmed steps, produces a superior report far more quickly than before.
As well as existing information (top programmes, reach, top shows by contribution, channel reports, competitor performance, market reports etc), the new report also includes all online data from Turner’s kids channels. This allows, for the first time, a detailed monthly analysis of the performance of key websites and online games.
Phu Truong, Director at Clusters commented, “Automated monthly reporting allows the team at Turner kids’ TV to spend more time analysing the data and adding value, rather than copying and pasting and checking for errors. It also reduces the number of random mistakes, and makes for a happier team overall. It’s a great example of how, by using data smartly, you can get more insights and save a lot of time.”
In addition to the report automation, Clusters also created a dashboard,allowing the research team to turn data into usable tools that pull insights
easily and effectively. The dashboard was designed to Turner’s requirement, helping the team look at trends, cross-market performance, franchise metrics, and audience profiles. This improved productivity and allowed them to focus on drawing insights from the data.
Results
The automated monthly reporting template from Clusters has dramatically freed up time for the team at Turner kids’ TV.
In addition, the new dashboard allows the team to generate analysis from the data quickly and easily without wading through a huge spreadsheet of cold numbers. It has also improved the quality and scale of the report, with Turner now being able to manipulate the data more freely – for example, being able to switch target audiences at the click of a button.
Another benefit is that the monthly report is now available in a timely manner, meaning the learnings are not irrelevant by the time the report is distributed.
Ranja Mohyieldin commented, “The new report quickly and easily informs the executive team on the performance of all Turner kids’ properties and is an invaluable tool to share success and best practice across the region. Ideally I now want to automate all regular reports enabling my team to move from data providers to insight suppliers.”
Commenting on the relationship with Clusters, Ranja Mohyieldin added, “Clusters have been a pleasure to work with, going out of their way to deliver a report which provides all the information we need and more. They have at all times been professional and incredibly knowledgeable, having a great grasp of the TV landscape across many of the markets we work across. Additionally, Clusters accommodated our requests incorporating images into the report, making it a digestible report for non-researchers as much as for researchers.”
