Innovation and Co-Creation:

The Success Story of the Tea Group’s New Business Template

The corporate template is a powerful tool for efficient and consistent brand communication.

However, it remains a tool in the hands of a corporate population that must see itself reflected in it and must have the technical knowledge to use it correctly.

cLIENT BACKGROUND

Tea Group operates in the energy, environmental, and water sectors, with about 600 employees and a profit of 19.9 million euros in 2019. The company focuses on innovation, culture, environment, and integration with local communities.

Recently, it has established an Innovation, Technology, and Information Services Directorate to promote innovation and Open Innovation. However, the company’s way of communication remained tied to an old way of making presentations, based on an old, rigid, barely customizable template system that was little used by TEA users.

cHALLENGE

In TEA, an old template system was in use, with a design that had become outdated and a structure that did not reflect the real needs of its users. Indeed, it was a common criticism that the template did not represent the actual needs of the users and that it required more customization work than it saved.

Therefore, the template in use was ineffective because it did not convey the message coherently, impacting both internal and external communication. Moreover, it was inefficient because it required a lot of customization work that users did not have the time to do.

However, the biggest challenge for the innovation management was to tackle the internal belief, widespread and now consolidated after years of frustration, that the corporate template was a useless waste of time and that it would be better not to have it in order to create slides more quickly and effectively.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Tea Group, an Italian multiutility based in Mantova, collaborated with MLC Presentation Design Consulting to create a new dynamic system of templates for corporate presentations. This initiative, led by M. Malvicini, Innovation Project Manager of Tea Group, aimed to improve the efficiency and quality of corporate presentations.

Challenge

TEA’s old template system was outdated and did not meet user needs, requiring excessive customization and negatively impacting communication. Overcoming the entrenched belief that the corporate template was a waste of time posed a significant challenge for innovation management.

Solution

MLC Presentation Design Consulting engaged company key figures in educational activities to highlight the benefits of using templates for effective presentations.

RESULT

The outcome was a high-quality, innovative corporate template that enhances productivity and communication consistency, enabling users to concentrate on content over design and saving work hours. Adoption was quick due to a bottom-up approach that addressed user needs, leading to widespread acceptance of the co-developed template.

SERVICES

#Presentation design consulting
#Custom presentation workshop
#Template pitch competition

SOLUTION

MLC Presentation Design Consulting involved all the key figures of the company in a series of educational and productive activities. Stakeholders were called to collaborate in an exciting educational journey to discover the importance of using templates for effective presentations.

The MLC Approach

Before even creating a template, the team of presentation strategists at MLC decided to initiate a true cultural shift by uprooting the false beliefs that, for years, had hindered the implementation of an effective templating system.

Working on adoption with a bottom-up approach that involved people, the MLC team paved the way for the development of a template that would be successfully adopted and used.

The insight

From the analysis of key users, it emerged that the main frustration was linked to the fact that the templates were not easily customizable, thereby forcing users to adapt to using slides and a communication system that was not representative.

Following an assessment of the users’ level of knowledge regarding slide masters and the management of a presentation’s architecture, a significant knowledge gap was identified. A corporate template is a powerful tool for communication, provided that the corporate population possesses the knowledge to use it correctly.

The lack of this awareness hindered innovation for years, creating false beliefs.

The Process

Initially, the Tea team invited Maurizio, author of Lean Presentation Design and Co-Founder & CEO of MLC Presentation Design, for a webinar to share the strategic importance of coordinating communication through a corporate template. In the workshop, Maurizio also delved into the technical aspects of creating a template.

Subsequently, TEA users were divided into groups, and each used the techniques learned in the workshop to develop a proposal for innovating the corporate template that reflected their original needs (essentially what they always found lacking in the template in use at the time).

The teams then competed in a Template Pitch Competition, presenting their template proposals to an internal jury, including some members of the MLC Team. The MLC strategists then captured all the insights and real needs that the TEA population brought to life and tried to meet.

In a final move, the MLC team took the best proposals and, starting from what the users had created, developed the new corporate template.

RESULTS

The result was an innovative corporate template with high-quality graphics that improves individual and group productivity, as well as the consistency of corporate communication. This tool allows users to focus more on content rather than the graphical aspect of presentations, saving hours of work.

Thanks to the bottom-up approach that started from a detailed analysis of users’ needs, the adoption was swift, and the new template was successfully welcomed by all users who found their needs met in what, this time, was a co-developed template rather than one imposed from above.

CONCLUSION

This collaboration between Tea Group and MLC Presentation Design Consulting highlights the importance of top management support and trust in innovation as a key success factor. The co-creation of innovative solutions has led to significant improvements in the efficiency and quality of corporate presentations. Engaging users through an approach that puts users at the center has fostered adoption and ensured the correct use of the new template.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

Our journey to create the template was an exciting adventure that involved the entire TEA Team, making us discover what our company truly needs. The competition of ideas pushed us to give our best, and in the end, made us all feel a part of something special: the new template that the MLC Team prepared for all of us.

To thank us for our great commitment and the value that everyone brought, the management rewarded all those who participated. It was a beautiful way to recognize how important it is to work together and team up towards a common goal.

M. Malvicini,
Innovation Project Manager

PROJECT OWNER

Alberto – Head of Consulting Services

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