Work
R² Data Labs
Driving internal adoption
R² Data Labs was founded to be a catalyst for digital innovation within Rolls-Royce, as the venerable engineering institution continued its transformation into an industrial technology company. Its mission was to demonstrate practical internal applications for new digital and data-led services, to inspire the rest of the business to deploy similar solutions for customers.
We worked with R² Data Labs to tell the stories of innovation and value needed to bring about this company-wide culture change.
The challenge
Digital transformations don’t come much bigger than Rolls-Royce’s. But change is hard. Especially for an organisation with 50,000 employees in multiple business units around the world, used to very specific ways of thinking and doing, rooted in decades of hard-earned experience.
To be an effective catalyst for change, R² Data Labs needed to demonstrate the value of digital innovation, showing how it could be practically and profitably deployed in an engineering context. And crucially, do all that with a credible voice.
The work
We built a content factory to produce a regular drumbeat of inspiring stories for the rest of the business. Scouring R² Data Labs for examples of value delivery with compelling headlines, and telling the story of the innovation behind the headline in an accessible way.
These stories were deployed in a sustained internal campaign to prove R² Data Labs’ expertise, demonstrate the value of the data-led approach to service development, and build momentum for Rolls-Royce’s ongoing transformation. The campaign ran across multiple internal channels – email, Yammer, the intranet and town hall meetings. The most compelling stories were told externally too – as part of an ‘outside-in’ approach to internal communications, and as proof to external stakeholders of the exciting digital innovations being forged within Rolls-Royce.
The impact
Our programme helped R² Data Labs to become a driving force behind Rolls-Royce’s digital transformation. By championing examples of innovative new services, it has generated further opportunities to add value within the business and to customers. Over five years, R² Data Labs programmes have unleashed over £400M of value across Rolls-Royce.
The internal success of R² Data Labs has also led directly to the launch of R² Factory, deploying the same approach to innovation and culture change on behalf of external customers.
