A Happy Landing for BAA

meaning was good value for money for us. They did a lot of work via the Internet or on the phone, instead of using up our management time travelling to meetings.

About BAA

BAA is the world's leading airport company. It is involved in almost every aspect of the day-to-day running of seven UK airports and a number of airports around the world. It is also one of the largest commercial landlords in the UK, providing more than one million square metres of commercial accommodation for around 900 airport retail organizations.

The brief

BAA runs a large and complicated Retail Profile Study, which interviews a substantial sample of passengers every month about their shopping experiences in BAA’s airports. It became necessary to switch to a new agency to process and analyse the survey data. BAA called on meaning to help them choose a new agency and to project manage the switch from one agency to the other.

The solution

BAA objectively evaluated potential agencies and types of technology and then selected a replacement agency. Meaning helped BAA to shortlist agencies and manage the switch from one to another, making extensive use of its project management extranet site and drawing on its specialist knowledge of the market research industry.

Services provided

Vendor evaluation and advocacy

Invitation to Tender writing

Project management

How we did this

Matt Titterton, Customer Insight Manager at BAA, describes the first stage in the project, which involved choosing a new agency, under the guidance of Tim Macer of meaning: “Tim used his knowledge of the industry to recommend some potential suppliers.” After that, BAA needed to make a choice: “meaning helped us to write a pitching document, which they sent out to the suppliers. We invited some of them to do a presentation. For the debriefing meeting we drew up an evaluation form and scored each company on the same criteria.” Having gone through this step-by-step process, BAA was able to choose their new agency in a very objective manner.

The second, and far bigger stage, of the project was planning and implementing the migration of the database from the outgoing agency to the incoming one. Matt points out that because the database is so large, it was a complicated and costly process. It also involved many people – different departments within BAA, as well as the two agencies. Matt explains how useful it was to have meaning, an outside organization, managing the project: “Tim was a mediator. He was the realist, the neutral party. He is really well known in the industry, and knew both agencies.”

For this stage, meaning’s project management extranet site was key to the project’s success. This is a password-protected site on the Web, which BAA, meaning and the two agencies could log into. All files and emails were on this site, giving everyone involved immediate access to the latest status of the project. “The Web site held it all together,” commented Matt, “because everything was documented.”

Of course, it was necessary to hold meetings to manage the project, but Matt feels these were kept to a minimum. “meaning was good value for money for us. They did a lot of work via the Internet or on the phone, instead of using up our management time travelling to meetings.”

The result

Matt concludes: “meaning did a lot of the legwork – like chasing files. They made sure we got value for money and did not have to buy any more time from the outgoing agency – and this can be quite expensive.”

Having made very successful use of meaning’s project management site, BAA turned to meaning to set up a new extranet site, which BAA now uses to share files and manage the account with their new agency.

About us

BAA