A leading global investment bank

The story

The bank needed to give its investment bankers faster, more reliable creative support for client pitches while controlling costs and supporting high-volume creative work. However, high agency costs, turnaround times of three to four days, and a 20% design error rate affected responsiveness and added pressure to internal teams. Williams Lea introduced a centralised, technology-enabled delivery model that brought onshore art direction together with specialist nearshore production.

The challenge

Operating across fragmented vendors created substantial friction in the bank’s creative ecosystem, leading to several inefficiencies:

• A $1.2 million annual average spend on external agencies, which eroded deal advisory margins without delivering scalable firmwide assets.
• Three to four-day cycle times that delayed deal submissions in fast-moving, time-critical pitch mandates.
• A 20% initial design error rate that entailed multiple review cycles, consuming high-value billable banking hours.
• Unpredictable deal flow spikes that triggered steep overtime expenses and ad-hoc agency fee penalties.

The solution and results

Williams Lea embedded an onshore Centre of Excellence in London for art direction and connected it to a specialist nearshore delivery hub. The team introduced a proprietary service management platform, ENGAGE, to replace manual email dispatch with intelligent, capacity-based routing and live queue dashboards. Automated templates and centralised asset management simplified daily, multichannel production, removing 12 non-value-added steps from the process.

The delivery model helped the bank respond to pitch opportunities faster and improve production quality. The operating model shift led to:

• 15% higher pitch win rate, supported by less than three-hour turn around for high-priority pitches, securing early-mover advantage and higher conversion.
• 99.3% accuracy in pitch production, protecting the bank’s market credibility.
• 30% lower external agency fees as routine creative work shifted into the managed hub.
• Substantial capacity gains, absorbing deal spikes with zero headcount or overhead growth.