Saffron Edge, based in New Jersey, USA, has been the digital marketing partner of various companies globally in diverse industries for more than 14 years.
It is a profitable business. Since their inception, they have delivered over 1500 successful projects and have a 99% client success rate.
Despite this, they had identified productivity issues among their teams and noted that their culture did not support transparency in company goals and priority projects.
These issues limit their teams’ potential and act as barriers to productivity and further business growth.
Feeling the need for professional guidance, the company’s CEO, Vibhu Satpaul, approached JOP and discussed Saffron Edge’s situation and specific issues in detail.
Since implementing JOP, Vibhu acknowledged that they have successfully increased its revenue by 75% in the last financial year.

Challenges

• Unable to track business progress in one place

Saffron Edge’s growing number of projects made it challenging for the teams to track progress and align their daily work and initiatives with their overall project requirements and company goals.
For business visibility, they were dependent on different sheets generated by different teams and a project management tool.
They still lacked the meaningful individual, team, and company-level objectives that would help them see the business progress in one place.
The lack of transparent business progress monitoring led to confusion, and the team members usually found it difficult to work in sync and have definite responsibilities on their minds all the time.
This made decision-making less effective and slow for managers, and hence, they delayed projects.

• Lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities

Saffron Edge had a task management system in place, but team members’ roles and responsibilities were not well-defined or meaningful.
Before JOP came into the picture, their team members lacked a sense of purpose and direction because they didn’t understand how their roles contributed to the team’s and the company’s overall success.
As a result, team members frequently felt disorganized, resulting in inefficiencies in team coordination.
Even more importantly, they could not grow in their roles because they lacked self-evaluation mechanisms.
It was difficult for team members to identify their own strengths and improvement areas.

• Required an agile goal-setting framework

Saffron Edge frequently struggled to unite team members around rapidly changing business objectives and priorities.
This challenge created uncertainty among employees about how their roles contributed to the overall company goals.
Each team member had a unique understanding of the project’s objectives, resulting in diluted efforts and potential missed opportunities.

• Lack of focus on business priorities

Managers usually spend a lot of time figuring out where the issues lie and what problem to solve first.
With multiple projects, team members and managers faced difficulties prioritizing tasks and allocating resources effectively.
Team members frequently became overly involved in day-to-day tasks, losing sight of the big picture and strategic goals and priorities.
As a result, some critical projects suffered setbacks, reducing overall productivity and threatening client satisfaction.

• HR lacked an efficient way to collate employee performance data

Saffron Edge experienced significant time lags in gathering critical employee performance metrics. The lack of a unified platform hampered HR’s ability to manage employee goals holistically, assess performance, and provide timely feedback.
They were losing valuable hours on manual data collection that could have been spent on strategic decision-making and employee development.

Solution

Saffron Edge’s CEO, Vibhu, reached out to JOP, and he then had a quick call with Arvind, JOP’s OKR Coach, to discuss the main challenges they are facing and if JOP’s platform and solutions could help his company.
This was a common case for JOP, where the client organization was completely new to the OKR framework.

• Buy-in to the new way of working

OKRs are a way of setting goals and tracking progress, and they only work if everyone is committed to them.
They enable cross-team collaboration and accountability among the team. This makes teamwork and the involvement of the team in the goal-setting process necessary.
JOP kicked off their journey with Saffron Edge by talking to all the leaders in one meeting. t’s imperative to get the leaders’ buy-in on any new methodology the organization is going to use.
JOP’s OKR Coach led the meetings. After the leaders were convinced of the OKR methodology, they gathered their team members, communicated the current challenges and management changes they were going to implement, and asked for their opinions.

• Effective goal-setting and establishing team alignment

Saffron Edge was already using an efficient task-management tool. It was great, and the team found it easy to use.
But to solve the challenge of work and role clarity and team alignment on the priority tasks and goals in a quarter, they needed a different solution.
Vibhu and the team leaders sat down with JOP’s OKR Coach for a few brainstorming sessions to figure out the core company goals and priorities.
They studied their whole business situation, including the SWOT analysis and micro aspects like time taken to complete specific tasks.
Based on Saffron Edge’s characteristics and business, Arvind helped the leadership decide on the company-level OKRs.
These OKRs acted like a North Star for the whole team, and they could then align their individual and team goals with them.
Arvind was able to guide the Saffron Edge leaders to adopt an effective plan for training the team members on creating OKRs and following the best OKR practices.
He also helped the Saffron Edge team decide on the OKR Champions. They picked Aditya Kumar, the Digital Marketing head, as their OKR Champion.
The OKR Champion’s job is to drive OKRs successfully in a team.

• Dynamic goal management and setting up for more focus in the day-to-day

With a transparent and agile goal-setting approach in place, the agency was able to successfully align each team member’s objectives with the company’s dynamic goals.
Employees gained a stronger sense of purpose as there is a clear connection between personal goals and organizational priorities.
BAU tasks are no longer isolated but are inseparably linked to overarching business priorities.
JOP’s collaborative features make day-to-day cross-functional coordination easier, allowing teams to focus on critical projects and allocate resources more effectively.

• A centralized platform to manage employee goals and performance

Through JOP, Saffron Edge now successfully centralizes employee goals, performance reviews, and feedback channels.
This digital transformation made it possible to track employee progress in real time. Managers and team members can now give and receive feedback on the same platform and use it to improve continuously.
Furthermore, the platform’s single repository for employee concerns gathered through custom anonymous surveys facilitated open communication, allowing HR to respond to individual needs quickly and cultivate a more engaging work environment.

• Adapting to the new way of working

You don’t want your team members to struggle and waste their productive time learning a new tool.
That’s where the in-app guide and Customer Success of JOP come in. After setting OKRs for the two teams, the Saffron Edge team onboarded JOP with step-by-step guidance on JOP’s Customer Success.
JOP recommended that Saffron Edge, based on their team size and novelty to OKRs, implement OKRs starting with two teams (Sales and Marketing) only to ease OKR adoption in the organization.
It was overwhelming for a few team members, Saffron Edge reported, as they were used to their old method of managing tasks.
JOP’s Customer Success team assured the team that it is a normal reaction to any new framework like this and that the team will adapt to it later.
JOP continues to answer user queries from Saffron Edge; whether it’s a technical roadblock in the software or someone wants the best practices on some feature, JOP’s Customer Success is there for them.

Results

• Revenue jump

After a rough few months beginning in mid-2021, Saffron Edge saw a remarkable 75% increase in revenue.
This accomplishment demonstrated the importance of setting clear and meaningful goals and getting team members on the same page.
They achieved efficient collaboration and improved teamwork by having everyone work together toward common goals.

• Clarity has become a part of strategic planning and work

The implementation of JOP’s OKR system increased transparency in projects and company goals. Everyone understands what they are attempting to accomplish.
It enables teams to make informed decisions and respond quickly to changes, resulting in better outcomes.
During a recent campaign, for example, their team was able to easily track their progress against key objectives, allowing them to optimize their efforts and collaborate more effectively based on the specific KRs.

• Improved teamwork and coordination

They are noticing an improvement in teamwork and coordination. Teams now have smoother project execution and make better use of resources thanks to JOP’s framework and collaboration tools.
Take, for example, their social media team. With JOP’s platform, they seamlessly coordinated content creation, short-term goals, and the quality of their work by working on shared KRs.
As a result, clients’ social media presence became more synchronized and impactful.

• Team members take ownership of their goals

Because of JOP, each team member understands exactly what they are responsible for, allowing them to take ownership of their tasks. This sense of accountability helps to motivate and engage employees.
For example, their SEO Specialist took the lead on optimizing Saffron Edge’s website for higher search rankings. He owns a meaningful KR: Increase the lead conversion rate by 20% in three months.
This sense of ownership not only streamlines processes but also instills a new level of enthusiasm within the team.

• A budding work culture of employee growth

Continuous feedback, skill development, and self-reflection became part of the culture, propelling personal and professional development.
For example, their content writers interacted with other team members to seek feedback on their work, allowing them to improve their skills.
Having shared KRs with other team members, like the SEO Specialist’s KR for optimizing the website, enabled them to seek feedback.

“Earlier, we were juggling a lot of things at once and felt we were doing enough. With JOP coming in, we really understood where each individual plays a role and what more can be taken on. Within six months, we’ve been able to set up a whole new vertical for performance marketing. That has been a goal for the last 4 years,” says Aditya Kumar, Digital Marketing Head, Saffron Edge.