LTM enabled a 42% TCO reduction and 98+% service levels for a digital media company through apps & infra automation, & operating model transformation

Client overview:

The client provides personalized digital media solutions, market intelligence, and effective consumer experiences to end-users of Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) businesses, agencies, and multi-brand retailers. They offer customized and measurable campaigns that connect shoppers to CPG brands and retailers, providing a flexible ecosystem of solutions that helps curate personalized customer experiences using real-time intelligence.

Client Challenges:

The client had several technical challenges that affected the business end-users, senior marketing managers, IT decision-makers, and other teams. These included:

• IT connectivity issues: The client was facing an IT connectivity issue between themselves and retailers. The applications used were outdated and the IT infrastructure was not the most robust. The client had multiple IT vendors and wanted to focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction.
• Non-aligned SLAs: The client’s Service-level Agreements (SLA) were not aligned to their business objectives and the latest technologies. This misalignment was negatively affecting their consumer experiences, pricing, profitability, and delivery.
• Scalability: The client’s existing solutions were neither scalable nor flexible enough to support rapidly evolving business objectives and demands.
• Lack of new business models and innovation: The client also faced several broken processes and a lack of innovation. This hindered their transformational growth.

The LTM approach:

Instead of dissecting the problems on their own to solve the challenges, the client was looking for a reliable technology partner who had unparalleled expertise in two areas—traditional IT and digital transformation. This is when we came into the picture to help the client. Instead of offering a product or solution off-the-shelf, we worked with a consulting approach of asking the right questions to understand the client’s real challenges such as:

• What were the challenges the client wanted us to address?
• How could technology or our solutions help the client?
• What were the top challenges that required immediate attention?
• How to create a long-term plan to eliminate all the challenges?

Solution highlights:

• We automated their delivery systems and made sure that all activities and processes were automated and can be picked up as a use case when required. 60+ use cases have been automated so far, which eliminated the manual effort of about 1100 hours per month across 14 tracks.
• We restructured the client’s operating model and took end-to-end ownership of their IT landscape in terms of testing, infrastructure management, and application management support, and assisted customers on the go.
• A cognitive chatbot within Microsoft Teams with 12 distinctive features was launched to boost employee productivity.
• We offered post-migration support for selected applications and infrastructure.
• Created a well-defined transformation roadmap for the client which would eventually lead them towards continuous improvement and transition to a DevOps model from the second year of execution.
• Created performance-linked Service-level Agreement (SLAs) and Operational-level Agreement (OLAs) to align with the Business SLAs.
• Introduced core and flex model to scale as per business demands.
• Established 39 metrics classified into critical, key, and general areas with SLAs and penalties for non-adherence to the agreed-upon service levels.

Technology Landscape:

Oracle, MSSQL, Windows, Linux, CentOS, Hadoop, Netezza, and Microsoft Azure.

Client benefits:

• The client witnessed a 42% Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction (cumulative) over a period of 5 years with 20% pass-back in the first year.
• Maintaining 98%+ SLA adherence since 2019.
• 46% reduction in major incidents by proactive housekeeping and monitoring tools implementation.
• Infrastructure support improvements yielded cost avoidance of approximately USD 225K per year for the client.