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Case study: Open University Business School

Stakeholder outreach and relationship building campaign to deliver revenue growth

The Open University (OU) Business School delivers transformational, high quality business and management education. The OU engaged Allegory to improve its relationship with FTSE 250 companies in order to build its reputation, raise awareness of its business offer and identify new revenue potential. 

Our response

We started with an extensive stakeholder and market research project pinpoint senior leaders from industry to interview, and assess the need for OU’s business offer.

This opened communication channels to a senior business audience, including 20 senior c-suite leaders from global corporates, such as Unilever and Rolls Royce, which helped us understand their influencers and drivers. 

We produced a detailed report at the end of the project which appraised the key findings of the research. The report highlighted challenges, priorities, risk factors and corporate considerations which senior directors of HR and learning and development consider when choosing a training provider for staff. 

The report also provided a carefully considered set of insight-based recommendations for how the OU could alter its offer to be more competitive in the corporate training market and better meet customer needs.

Allegory gets strategic communications with a vengeance. Its contribution to the OU has been significant, supporting me and my team deliver a ground-breaking communications plan that credibly and compellingly conveys our track record for innovation. Emma and her team truly understand the pressures of in-house comms, and find solutions where others get overwhelmed by problems.
Lucian Hudson
Director of Communications, Open University

The outcome

Our report was a key driver for the reshaping of the OU Business School’s strategy, and in the development of their offer to corporate clients. This contributed to a 20% increase in the work undertaken on behalf of this group in the past three years and paving the way a range of new strategic and commercial relationships for the OU with companies including Unilever and IBM.

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