Tailwind Group

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a capability manager for Tesco Stores Ltd. We’re one of the largest grocery retailers in the U.K.

What challenge were you trying to address with Tailwind Group?

We realized that we possess excellent training materials and courses for junior associates, but our program lacked educational resources for expert-level employees. However, the challenge with putting together a master class program is that it’s dependent on the schedules of both trainees and instructors. Our solution was to record the sessions and make them viewable on our website. This project required us to hire a video production company.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tailwind Group took part in filming around 20 different master classes. The lessons cover various topics and are taught by different speakers, but each one follows a similar format. The presentations take place in our large meeting room, are roughly 45 minutes in length, and are concluded with a Q&A session.

In addition to filming, Tailwind Group performs the initial editing process to meld together the key points of each lesson and highlight portions of the Q&A section. They also work with us to develop slides that complement the ideas presented in each video. The slides and videos combine to form finished articles that are posted to our site. They’re scheduled to help us produce more training videos on an ongoing basis.

What is the team composition?

Andrew (Producer, Tailwind Group) is our primary point of contact. They allocate a two-person camera crew to film each master class.

How did you come to work with Tailwind Group?

They were recommended to me by our procurement team and internal film crew. They’re relatively local and have the reputation of being a reliable firm, so we hired them.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working in January 2018, and the engagement is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

A lot of our colleagues have communicated that they enjoy watching the product talks. Some of our central teams use the master classes to learn new skills and understand the challenges faced by internal customers. We’ve found that posting the videos to our site influences various departments company-wide by bringing awareness to the presented information. The lessons consistently receive new views each week.

How did Tailwind Group perform from a project management standpoint?

They work with us to establish the best way to approach each project. They’re engaging, accommodating, and professional. I’ve nothing but good things to say about them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re flexible and understand that our plans tend to change frequently. As a retail company, we operate in a fast-paced environment and often have to augment our previously finalized decisions. Tailwind Group’s team is agile enough to keep up with us.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only thing I can think of involves their delivery of editing comments. I prefer to address their feedback online, but that hasn’t always been possible. However, they still execute our requests flawlessly.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the learning and communications manager for Tesco’s online platform. I am responsible for developing material to train our colleagues who work in stores and fulfillment centers across the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

What challenge were you trying to address with Tailwind Group?

Currently, all of our training processes are paper-based. Our goal was to create a new and engaging learning framework using instructional videos.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Tailwind Group provided mainly production and graphic design services for our e-learning series of about 30 videos. We met to brief the team on the concepts we wanted to be captured in the videos. They offered possible solutions, and once we agreed on a path for the visual, they developed the scripts and began the production process.

Tailwind worked on multiple types of videos. We have three-minute videos that follow an employee as they complete their core role, with a corresponding explanatory interview. Other videos are more procedural, with a voiceover describing a certain task, which could be five or six minutes long. Our purely informative videos generally use graphic footage to illustrate a certain topic. Tailwind handled the shooting, editing, and producing processed for all of the visuals.

The videos have not gone live yet. We are still collaborating to finish some of them and make additional updates and finishing touches to some of the other ones. The team is also helping me embed these videos into PowerPoints for future training sessions.

What is the team composition?

The team composition varies depending on the task. I am normally assigned a producer, who helps with the preproduction and editing needs. That representative will be on set for filming, with a camera operator and a production assistant. We will also have additional producers if necessary.

How did you come to work with Tailwind Group?

We have an internal visual production team, but they didn’t have the capabilities necessary to complete this project. They recommended we partner with Tailwind based on a positive experience in the past.

How much have you invested with them?

We have spent between $50,000–$200,000 on this project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2017 and the project is ongoing.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We have piloted the new material with colleagues and the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Employees claim that the quality of the videos is higher than any of the other videos they’ve seen within our company. We are very excited to see the final product go live.

How did Tailwind Group perform from a project management standpoint?

The Tailwind team is organized by a client relationships manager, who assigns the representatives to each of our projects, plans the timeline, and determines the cost. The production team managed their workflow very well. They will hit the established deadline no matter how tight it is. They see each task from beginning to end.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I really appreciate Tailwind’s flexibility in all aspects of our project. They will bend over backward to accommodate our needs. They are adaptable in their approach to filming, setting a location, scaling the team, and any additional areas to assure we have the best possible experience.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t think so. They are a great company to work with.

Any advice for potential customers?

Talking from one project manager to another, I would recommend that they stay involved in the project through pre-production, filming, editing, and post-production. This will result in the best possible outcome from the engagement.