Our part-time CIO helped in updating the tech for a media company, giving them every opportunity to grow rapidly over the coming years.

Company Profile 

This international stock image supplier is a leading online provider of stock images, videos, and other media content. Their diverse collection originates from agencies, independent photographers, news archives, museums, national collections, and public domain sources.

CEO’s Mission 

With a vision of updating the media company tech and driving a significant increase in annual revenue by £5M over 2 years, the CEO aimed to:

  • Review and identify opportunities for business process automation and scalability.
  • Provide a roadmap for digital transformation, enabling the company to tap into new market opportunities.
  • Enhance existing services and make informed, knowledge-led decisions on future service offerings.

 

CIO’s Objectives 

  • Identify areas of opportunity for a 30% surge in revenue.
  • Craft an IT strategy overhaul to back the growth plan.
  • Elevate customer experience and engagement through technology modernisation.
  • Ensure the technology infrastructure is future-proof.

 

What the Director Did 

Leadership Towards Updating The Tech at This Media Company

Collaborating closely with the CEO, our CIO pinpointed key infrastructure and technology bottlenecks that hindered revenue generation and growth. They also highlighted business processes that needed optimisation, leveraging fractional CIO services for maximum impact.

Designed and Delivered a Roadmap for Transformational Change

After a thorough assessment of the company’s IT landscape, the Associate charted out a roadmap for transformational change and process improvement. This strategy, developed in consultation with key stakeholders, took into account the daily needs of both company employees and customers. Thanks to this comprehensive approach, the Associate achieved a notable boost in performance, both internally and in terms of customer experience.

Identifying the Media Company Focus Areas for Tech Updates

Infrastructure:  

The existing on-premise infrastructure, designed for minimal retail volume and lacking funds, was a challenge. Developers were in a constant cycle of upgrades to maintain performance. Recognising the benefits of cloud infrastructure integration, a decision was made to transition to the cloud.

Ecommerce:  

The in-house development was not scalable and didn’t align with all e-commerce standards. The solution? Source an off-the-shelf enterprise IT solution, integrate it, and ensure vendor support.

Consumer – Web/Front End:

The current setup was suboptimal for a retail service. It lacked AI, a relevancy engine, and had inadequate analytics. There was a limited understanding of customer conversion and merchandising.

Commercial Client Portal

Similar issues as the Consumer front end were observed. Financial processes were shaky, with instances of clients being inaccurately billed.

  

The Associate led a transitional project programme that included moving several platforms and information stores to a cloud-based system, updating processes, and realigning customer experience. This approach ensured the organisation would remain resilient, future-proof and adaptable in the face of exponential volume ramp-up and changing working practices.  

The Results

Upon completion of the transformation projects, the organisation became more efficient, made better-informed decisions by having real-time data to hand, and is in a strong position to scale its service delivery in line with expectations, with a higher ROI. 

As a consequence, operational costs were reduced. Due to this and the additional volume growth and change in the customer experience, the client created several new roles to meet demand. 

Revenue uplift was immediate and after 2 quarters was tracking 25% above expected performance. 

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