Holistic technology consulting and delivery that resulted in uncovering an opportunity for a 40% cost cut in year one alone
Executive Summary
Challenge: The company needed to evaluate if their current tech can still enable dynamic growth in the coming years or needs to be improved in order to cope with new challenges.
Approach: We collaborated with the client closely, conducted audits of the current CMS and infrastructure, and performed a comprehensive management study to recommend the most suitable path.
Result: The service could be upgraded, not only increasing security and UX but also reducing annual running costs by a factor of ten. The investment would save the client over 40% of the cost in year one.
Services we used:
Table of Contents
About the client
Our client is a global b2b publishing company that delivers exceptional content through various channels, from digital and print to webinars and f2f conferences. With its broad offering. the organisation caters to multiple industries including insurance, law, wealth, education, HR, and others.
Business challenge
To deliver the maximum value to stakeholders, the company needed to evaluate whether their current technology can still enable dynamic growth in the coming years or needs to be improved in order to cope with new challenges.
As publishing is their main area of expertise, with IT fulfilling more of a supportive role to their business endeavours, the company looked for a close partnership with a full-spectrum technology consulting and delivery firm.
Our role
We assembled a strong team of well-rounded experts who remain at a close disposal of the client and constantly listen to their needs. As their business environment is very complex, we aimed to support our client holistically.
One of the topics that materialised throughout our collaboration was the company’s key system for content management (CMS). Would it make sense to replace it, change it or leave it as is?
To investigate the issue, we conducted three audits: of the current CMS, of the feasibility to use WordPress and of the current infrastructure.
For each of the three audits, we also conducted a management study to set the options firmly in the business context of the company.
In the management study we covered possible scenarios for three different time horizons and included an 11-factor risk analysis over five risk categories.
After carefully considering multiple factors and available resources, we recommended to keep the current CMS and introduce quality of life changes to optimise outputs for the existing ecosystem. Such an approach would provide the best ROI for the time horizon specified by the client.
Effects of our cooperation
As a hands-on technology company, we do much more than just provide advice.
One of the risks highlighted in the audit was the lack of proper technical documentation for the current CMS. Its presence is critical in potential solution scaling for securing optimal business continuity and for smooth talent onboarding. In order to address this, we analysed the current solution thoroughly and created technical and business documentation for it with the aim of reducing the onboarding threshold by up to 87%. Correct project governance and regular drumbeat meetings with the client ensured we’re constantly on track in achieving our targets .
Another project revolved around a post-acquisition opportunity to re-build a data-centric product into a new solution, providing more value and better industry insights for the highly specialised industry.
During the Discovery phase, we identified a major improvement to the authentication service the client was using. The service could be upgraded, not only significantly increasing security and User Experience, but also reducing annual running costs by a factor of ten!
Even factoring in development costs, the investment would save the client over 40% of the cost in year one. As this was a highly time-sensitive project, we went from the identification of the need to development project kick off in four days.
Main benefits of our partnership
The client is no longer on their own with technology; and the technology is no longer a blocker to their growth. We truly listened to the client’s needs and are the go-to people for company-wide problem solving from tech strategy to implementation.
We use our agile approach to look for improvements, uncover the client’s potential and help them make technology a multiplier of company equity.