Adroll

Adroll

Background

 

Founded in 2007. Adroll is a technology company that puts their customers first. They are the most successful advertisement retargeting platform in the world. Their mission is “to help every marketer collect, analyze, and act on their customer data to deliver high performance marketing campaigns.”

Innovation

Input

Adroll gathers their input from both internal and external sources. For the internal input there is a feedback loop of ideas that flows from the top-down. In order to gather quantitative and qualitative data from their frontline team that goes to their clients in order to understand their questions and concerns. In addition to these sources of feedback, Adroll uses a formula known as RICE ((Revenue*Impact*Confidence/Effort) = VALUE) in order to determine if the idea is worth investing time and resources into.

  • Cross department work environment is important for the company.  Allows for transparency and gets rid of any barriers between teams and positions.
  • As mentioned in input Adroll follows a certain algorithm to analysis a new project’s potential risks:  

((Revenue*Impact*Confidence/Effort) = VALUE)

  • This is used to build a Minimal Viable Product (MVP)
    • This finds mistakes first to help build a product better for later when development gets closer to launch.
  • Process and efficiency are important when developing
    • However “too much process” kills efficiency as well as “too little process” also kills efficiency

Process

Adroll are using a framework called “RICE” for its measurement of success. The framework allows them to always be aligned to certain metrics when evaluating each project and to keep certain standards to secure success for the projects that will be implemented. The metrics used when measure for success are:

  • Reach/Revenue – how many people will it impact/how much revenue will it generate
  • Impact – how much it will impact each person/user
  • Confidence – how confident in the measurements (%)
  • Effort – how long will it take/”person-months”/working-hours

 

Output

The advantage for Adroll when using the framework “RICE” is it facilitates and is a simple tool for prioritization. Also, it aligns each project and everyone in the company through a shared tool. In other words, in will not only create easier metrics for success, but also create alignment within the company.

The decision to exit a project if successful vs failed is first of all measured against the RICE framework. However, it depends a lot on each individual project and is a “give and take” approach. The decision is usually made with the team closest to the product or service. Although, the final decision is made by the product manager if they see, supported by data, that the project will not work out/be a successful implementation.