When it comes to digital publishing and marketing, T4G’s Quality Assurance Team is passionate – even obsessive – about accuracy

In this world of email and other paths of digital communication, we see common mistakes all the time; from spelling and grammatical errors to sending and posting things the wrong way or to the wrong people. And yet, for companies marketing messages to the world, few things send such a negative message to customers and prospective clients than silly mistakes. And that’s all types of companies; from retailers to power utilities, tourism operators to financial institutions and healthcare providers, and many more. T4G Limited’s Quality Assurance team for digital publishing and marketing was built to insure that the right corporate messages are being sent to the right people on behalf of our clients. Nobody’s perfect, but T4G’s QA Team sports an industry-leading 99.5 per cent accuracy rate for web publishing and E-marketing. With a proven process of checks and re-checks throughout the entire production cycle, including using standard Microsoft tools to send content to T4G for proofing, the QA team ensures content is up-to-date, fresh and error free. The following is one client’s story.

The Challenge

Cadillac Fairview Corporation Limited is one of Canada’s largest real estate leasing companies with about 25 malls across the country and numerous office buildings representing nearly 48 million square feet of leasable space at 85 properties across North America, including some of Canada’s landmark developments, such as Toronto-Dominion Centre, Toronto Eaton Centre, Pacific Centre and Chinook Centre. Like so many companies these days, Cadillac Fairview publishes millions of digital messages every year via email campaigns and web updates and articles. The content is national, regional and specific to individual malls. In other words, it must be sliced and diced, which complicates matters. Therefore, the content must be accurate and must get to the correct people.

The Solution

Cadillac Fairview approached T4G to find a solution to allow the company to make more frequent web site updates, increase the volume of emails, while reducing the number of errors that were being exposed to customers. T4G proposed the outsourcing of this activity to their Quality Assurance team who had the technical skills and processes to check content for errors. A process was established where properties could use standard Microsoft Office tools to prepare and edit the content and send this data to T4G whereby the QA team would proof the content and handle all the technical components to get the content published and emailed to the customer base. This had a side benefit as it freed up time mall staffs were spending on the technical aspects of web site updates and emails so they could spend more time on marketing-related activities.

“In 2011, some 19 million emails were sent to the Cadillac Fairview database of almost a half million subscribers and we made 46,000 web site updates,” says Domenic Ali, leader of the T4G QA Team. “The content had to be validated. It had to get to the right people. And it had to get there on time, every time. Through all that, there were a mere 14 bug issues – or a 99.5 per cent accuracy rate.”

Though technology facilitates in the delivery of this content and often red-flags potential problems, it is the very human attention to detail that sets the T4G QA team apart.

“We were pleased from the beginning, but when the numbers came back indicating a mere 0.5 per cent error rate we were absolutely delighted,” says Susan Williams, Cadillac Fairview's Senior Director National Research & Marketing

“Realistically, eradicating every single bug issue is not likely but T4G’s QA Team is already so close to that goal.” Danielle Scholfield, T4G’s QA production coordinator, says getting it right begins with a T4G-designed process of meticulous checks and counter checks for each and every piece of client content. “After the process is completed, the button to publish is pressed. Though pressing that button is nerve-wracking at times we have the confidence that our process eliminates potential mistakes,” she says.

Benefits

Mistakes can happen; but the risk of mistakes can be mitigated. In this digital age, if your company makes a major mistake and publishes the wrong information a retraction may not work and it can hit the bottom line hard, costing not only dollars but a loss of reputation. With T4G’s QA team, rest assured potential problems are meted out and rectified 99.5 per cent of the time. Not every little mistake will snowball into something that can cost your company millions of dollars, but why take that chance at all?

About Cadillac Fairview

Cadillac Fairview is one of North America’s largest investors, owners and managers of commercial real estate. For more than 50 years, Cadillac Fairview has been leading the way in commercial real estate with innovative design, development and management.

About T4G

We design, develop, and implement technology solutions to help our customers run their businesses better. Our philosophy is based on The Intelligent Application of Technology™, which uses a project-based approach to solve business problems & deliver measurable value.