Yellow announces bold restructure to drive digital offering

Yellow announces bold restructure to drive digital offering

Yellow has today announced the biggest change to its business since it de-coupled from Telecom in 2007. It will separate its print and digital teams in a bid to drive its digital marketing offering.

CEO Chris Armistead says the change is the next stage in Yellow’s three year transformation plan that has been enabled with the completion of a significant IT overhaul.

“We’ve spent the last year focussing on innovation and have just finished building a world-leading proprietary technology platform from which the newly structured company will operate. It's the only one of its kind in any directories business around the world and means we can deliver digital tools with real speed and agility, underpinned by our directories offering” he said.

He said having two distinctly different sales teams for directories and digital marketing, will allow Yellow to evolve to meet customers’ needs. The digital unit will be led by Steve Traplin, former Director of Sales, and the directories unit by Liz Austin, former Director of Operations.

“Customers talking to us about their digital needs are different. We’re becoming an advisor and educator to businesses looking to harness digital channels to showcase what they do. These kind of conversations are more in-depth and don’t need to be linked to an annual directories deadline,” said Chris.

“It is part of Yellow's long term commitment to Kiwi business owners that they can be easily found by their customers or potential customers, through either directories or digital marketing.”

To boosts its digital innovation, Yellow has introduced two incubation units the first to build and launch new digital marketing products and this will be led by CTO Michael Hendry. The second unit, led by Philip Coop, Director of Innovation and Strategy, will focus on developing partnerships with third parties. Armistead says the public can expect to see exciting new developments from these teams by year end.

In making the changes, Yellow has conducted independent research into the digital marketing needs of small business owners in New Zealand to ensure it is equipped to deliver the right level of service.

As a result, it is proposed that the change in structure will result in around 35 job losses, the majority of which are from the Auckland sales team, with smaller numbers impacted in the regions and in the corporate services team.
Armistead is quick to point out that although there will be losses in some areas the proposal includes regional job creation in areas like Hamilton and Tauranga.

“It’s always difficult to make staffing changes, and not a decision that we’ve take lightly. But we’ve done this to meet the needs of our customers and to help our business evolve.”

Armistead says that at the end of the consultation period, the company will work with any affected staff and, where possible, redeploy them to other areas of the business. 

The business units will be served by a corporate services team comprising of HR, marketing, IT and finance.

Yellow says the proposed changes will be confirmed by 1 July and come into effect on 1 August.

ENDS

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