Seminar – Optimising Sales Operations at Global Radio

Dr Mark Bloomfield, Global Radio

Global Radio (owner of the Heart, Capital, Classic, Smooth, LBC, Gold and XFM brands) reaches over 21 million people each week with annual advertising revenue of £250 million. Global operates a B2B sales function with over 500 sales staff cross the UK. As such, there exists a huge opportunity to optimise our sales operations. In the seminar, we explore the current initiatives to optimise the sales operations including sales territory allocation, client behavioural segmentation, pricing, account management and co-selling. In particular, we draw upon the theory of Revenue Management (RM) which seeks to maximise revenue/profit utilising a finite and perishable resource. With reference to the sales operation, we consider the sales person’s time as the perishable resource and consider methods to maximise the revenue opportunity from the sales person’s time (revenue per available sales hour or RevPash). We will also explore other areas of opportunity including driving behavioural change within the sales force via commission modelling. Finally, we will consider how we can partner with academic institutions to shortcut the time between academic research and implementation.

Speaker bio

Dr Mark Bloomfield, Global Radio, Mark graduated with a PhD in Aerospace Engineering (working on the Airbus A380/A350 programmes) from the University of Bristol in 2009, following a BSc in Mathematics from King’s College London. Having decided to pursue a commercial career, he initially joined Thomas Cook, creating an Operations Research function and building a dynamic pricing system to grow the Group’s profitability. In July 2012, Mark joined Global Radio to pioneer a new Revenue Management initiative within Broadcast Media. Mark manages a team of 20 covering functions such as planning, forecasting, optimisation, inventory management and pricing. Over the past year, his team have been responsible for the in-house development of a new revenue management system leading to over a four per cent growth in operating revenues. More recently, Mark has been responsible for driving a data science and data visualisation agenda at Global as well as new product development working closely with vendors and academic institutions. Mark is fanatical about optimisation (and golf) and nothing excites him more than complexity (except when his baby daughter sleeps well at night)!

Also in attendance will be Dr Aggelos Oikonomopoulos, Head of Revenue Management Development at Global Radio. Angelos was born in Athens, Greece. Quickly showing his interest in problem solving and maths, he moved to Crete to attend the Production Engineering and Management school at the Technical University of Crete. Falling in love with the subject (and the sun) he continued his studies to attain an MSc and a PhD in Production Systems Simulation, Optimization and Control.

In the past he was worked as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Technical University of Crete and at Thomas Cook UK as an Operations Research Consultant.

Currently holding the position of Head of the RM Development team within the Revenue Management (RM) department at Global Radio. Angelos leads an agile R&D team responsible for the development, delivery and constant improvement of analytical and predictive tools to provide insight on inventory and pricing tactics, enhance management information and drive informed decision for senior management.

He is in a constant love-hate relationship with data.