REVOLUTIONISING MANUAL PROCESSES

Hudson MX identified a need for advertising agencies to modernise their media buying and accounting workflows, integrate their disjointed processes and systems, and establish connectivity with their commercial partners, including media owners. Their vision was to create the world’s first cloud-based, customisable platform along with a suite of open partner APIs for all media types, markets, and end-to-end workflows including: selecting ad space and schedule, negotiating rates, ordering, billing, and paying. 

Traditionally, many of these processes were very manual and disjointed—based on Excel spreadsheets, emails, faxes, and phone calls—because legacy buy-side tools struggled to keep up with the market’s needs and the pace of technological change. The resulting experience was time-consuming and frustrating for users and posed obstacles for Agencies expected to deliver the best results for their marketing clients with speed, accuracy, and accountability. For example, before Hudson MX, it was unnecessarily challenging to quickly secure the best ad placements to reach the marketer’s target audience at the right time and lowest price.

A NEW WAY TO TRANSACT

By automating and streamlining these processes, from entering a marketer’s goals for an advertising campaign all the way through to making payments to media owners for ad space, the team at Hudson MX knew that they could improve the experience for everyone involved, allowing agencies to focus on the things that are most important to their business and their clients. 

Hudson MX partnered with Endava right from the start to build a modular, open, and fully configurable platform capable of accommodating any agency, market, media type, or buying strategy. The team size has grown tenfold over the past four years. The Endava team comprises architects, business analysts, development, project managers, UX designers, DevOps, and testers working across three different delivery units. Together, Endava and Hudson MX have been able to drive digital innovation that has disrupted the market.

FIT FOR PURPOSE

The agnostic SAAS platform supports multi-tenancy and can be configured to meet the current and future needs of any Agency. This includes supporting all media types—from traditional television and radio to social, search, and programmatic. In addition to delivering time savings on automated activities, the platform enables buyers new and exciting capabilities such as optimising buying across channels and media types such as television, radio, streaming video, and streaming audio. Agencies using Hudson MX now have the time and tools to innovate and deliver the best possible ROI on their clients’ massive investments in advertising.

BASED ON REAL-TIME DATA AND INSIGHTS

Buyers need relevant, up-to-date information at their fingertips to act quickly and make the best decisions. The speed at which the platform operates, along with the ability to easily get data in and out and access it when and where needed, provides a distinct competitive advantage. For example, replacing long wait times with nearly instant calculations can mean the difference between getting, or missing out on a prized ad spot. Together with Hudson MX’s inhouse team, we worked tirelessly to test and optimise platform performance with agency customers. 

RULES-BASED AUTOMATION ENSURES CUSTOMER CONTROL

While customers want efficiency, they do not want to give up control. To provide flexibility and give agencies and buyers ownership of decision-making, in-platform workflow automation is based on configurable logic rules dictated by an Agency’s authorised administrators. These rules rely on extensive fields and permutations to meet the needs of each customer and can be self-configured via intuitive interfaces.

START-UP THINKING WITH ENTERPRISE RIGOR

Hudson sought in a delivery partner a combination of innovation, skill, and reliability. As a fast-moving start-up with a big vision, Hudson MX sought a nimble partner with creative ideas, processes, and people. Just as importantly, since the platform handles vast amounts of data and is relied upon to process payments, they had to be confident its partner could turn out an incredibly robust, secure, and scalable platform. Finally, in Endava, they found a delivery partner able to consistently hit tight client deadlines on time and within budget.

LOOKING AHEAD

Hudson’s flagship product, BuyerAssist™ has been used by all the major global advertising holding companies including all of the top 15 agencies in the U.S. to transact $6+ billion of media buys with 3,000+ media sellers. Customers report, on average, 30% time savings on automated tasks. Further efficiencies and capabilities are planned for Hudson MX’s clients through the use of emerging technologies, data insights, and AI. Through the iterative ideation to production approach of Endava, improvements are identified and applied regularly, meaning that the product will continue to meet the evolving needs of clients in the future.