Dex one Case study (logo)

Dex One and HCL -
ACHIEVING DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION
through PARTNERSHIP
& COLLABORATION.
CLIENT BACKGROUND
Dex One is a leading US-based marketing services company. Dex One’s 1,500
dedicated marketing consultants work with about 435,000 local businesses to
create customized marketing programs to help reach their customers. Dex One
has a wide range of products and services that help local businesses grow.
This includes online and mobile-based search solutions, print yellow pages
directories and voice-based search platforms. Its in-house marketing solutions
include Dex-published yellow pages directories, which are co-branded with other
leading brands in the industry, an internet yellow pages site ‘Dex Knows.com’ and
a mobile application ‘Dex Mobile’.
Dex also provides end-to-end marketing solutions for local businesses. Dex
One’s digital affiliate marketing solutions are bolstered by their search engine
marketing product ‘DexNet’ which extends client’s reach to their leading internet
and mobile partners to attract consumers searching for local products and
services.
Dex’s current and future strategic intent and vision is - ‘Growth by capitalizing
upon the digital opportunity and thus capturing a greater share of the client’s
digital marketing investment’.
BUSINESS CHALLENGE
The entire print and publishing industry is undergoing a substantial
transformation. The continuing decline in the use of print directories, increased
competition - particularly from existing and emerging online companies - and a
continuing decline in ad sales due to ongoing weak economic conditions have
made “digitization” not a mandate, but a condition essential for the very
survival of any company in this industry.
A rapid shift in the use of new devices, online mediums and social engagement is
changing the face of marketing. Dex One was driving towards an inflexion point
where only digital growth could help overcome decline. Additionally, a slow
recovery in the face of trying economic conditions - with local businesses
continuing to see ‘little to no' new business formation, no job creation and no
injection of new capital and customers exercising caution and restrain in spending
spelt further challenges. Hence, a steep decline in new revenue warranted Dex
One to optimize their spend on operations. Dex One wanted to overcome these
challenges by expanding their digital product portfolio. So that when the
marketing dollars migrated from print media to digital media, they were well
poised to capture more of the shift in spend.
"We were facing two main challenges in our business. First, we needed to
reduce our IT cost structure significantly to bring it in line with the declining
revenues from the print side of our business. Second, we needed to revitalize
and add to our digital product portfolio to reflect the rapidly changing nature of
our business. We needed the right partner with a diverse services portfolio &
willingness to invest in critical areas such as people, processes, and
technologies. Today we believe HCL as our partner was undoubtedly the right
choice” said Atish Banerjea, SVP and CTO, Dex One Corporation.
ENGAGEMENT MANDATES
Dex One’s overall objective was to drive “Digitization - both internally and
externally” to create a significant cost advantage, backed by IT optimization.
They aimed to do this in the following way:
• Expand services and establish a full complement of digital products: Dex
One was looking to rapidly expand digital offerings to increase penetration
rates among consumers and expand share of wallet from advertisers. This
would help close the gap, offsetting print losses.
• Internal change and reorganization via a massive skills refresh: 700
professionals were hired with marketing, sales and digital development as key
skill areas. Dex One was focused on building a high energy, digital savvy sales
organization that was committed to winning in the market place. For this, they
established a Dex One Sales Academy with an intensive curriculum that
leveraged computer-based training. In addition, they provided consultants with
iPads loaded with customized sales applications and digital web-based
conferencing and provided them with a new CRM platform on salesforce.com.
“Dex One needed a dramatic transformation led by a strong digitization drive,
we needed to quickly revitalize our print based products and transform them
into improved, easy to consume digital suite of products. We also needed to
drive several other objectives such as cost reduction, improved flexibility,
agility, and process excellence. With HCL as our partner of choice we were
confident we would be able to outperform on all fronts” said Atish Banerjea,
SVP and CTO, Dex One Corporation.
Dex One needed to drive flexibility, agility and process maturity, leading to faster
turnaround time and significant cost optimization. Dex One aimed to add
technical expertise and capacity to its product engineering and development
teams, IT helpdesk support and quality assurance to support varied technologies,
including iOS, Android development, data warehousing and business intelligence.
“By selecting HCL Technologies, we gained solid engineering expertise that
complemented our Santa Monica, California and Denver digital product
development teams. This powerful combination of people and processes has
reduced development cycle times and accelerated the delivery of new digital
solutions to our customers,” said Atish Banerjea, Dex One Senior Vice
President and Chief Technology Officer. “Beyond the operational benefits, this
partnership reduced our costs and is part of the company’s larger effort to
record $140 mn in cost savings in 2011.”
AREAS OF ENGAGEMENT
The Dex One HCL engagement was established to leverage best practices from
HCL’s prior successful engagements and was further cemented on the basis of
their understanding of the fundamental transformation sweeping the advertising
industry as a whole. HCL in collaboration with Dex One effectively gauged
business requirements - by interacting at all levels and with key functions across
Dex One, performed a detailed as-is-analysis and built a suitable business case
for implementing digital initiatives and developing and supporting applications.
HCL supports several business functions including advertiser self-service,
marketing, sales, production and CRM. HCL’s areas of engagement with Dex
One include:
• Application development, support and upgrade: HCL supports 50+
Enterprise Applications like Business Data Warehouse, reporting, custom web
applications, marketing and sales functions, back office production, Oracle
HR/ Finance modules, Documentum, print and digital delivery platforms,
self-service portals and databases.
• Platform development, sustenance and support: Several new revenue
generation platforms on mobile, web and social channel, advertiser value
creation platforms, advertising network, digital search engine and cloud-based
applications for sales force automation platform. Additionally, HCL, working
with Dex One, helped define a digital, multi-channel strategy for web, ad
networks, social media and mobile.
• Helpdesk Services and Support: Helpdesk Management with 24/7/365
L1/L2 staffing, providing remote support across all Dex One locations and
on-site support at eight key Dex One offices.
• Implementing quality assurance for the enterprise suite of applications
such as graphics and marketing systems, print and digital applications, mobile
applications, digital delivery platforms and back-end search engines. HCL
executed Agile-based testing cycles and performed automation, functional,
regression and performance testing.
• Co-creating value, enhancing productivity for Dex One by implementing
value portals and metrics program to gauge quality of deliverables and team
productivity. Beyond this, HCL is continuously working with Dex One on
executing the strategic vision of the company to keep Dex One a step ahead in
the industry.
“HCL has spent time understanding the industry and the marketplace; this is
helping create new ideas”, said Atish Banerjea, SVP and CTO, Dex One
Corporation.
HCL in conjunction with Dex One has worked significantly towards providing
a boost to their mobile capability working on areas such as application
development, support and testing for iPhone/ iPad, Android and Blackberry,
mobile web development and hosting for advertisers, mobile display advertising
etc. The key implemented features include user activity analysis, user registration
and other features such as managing and sharing favorites and reviews.
Furthermore, HCL has significantly improved the application’s performance
(from 35 to 5 seconds).
HCL, working with Dex One is focused on relentless, continual innovation:
• Digital innovation - new products/ platforms for Dex One’s digital
business: Leveraging its Digital Media Lab, HCL and Dex One jointly analyzed
industry trends, developed and/or showcased relevant solution accelerators
around search engines optimization, online directories, social enterprise and
mobile applications. Some key solutions proposed to Dex One from HCL
include Mobile Augmented Reality, mobile coupons, N=1 Personalization,
Socialytics, contextual browser, self-service advertising platform, optimizing
social media strategies for Facebook/ Dex One’s website, TV/ social media
widgets and Blinke (eCommerce framework).
• Fostering multi-channel capabilities for enabling digital transformation on
the mobile, social and TV platforms, adjacent to the print business to enable
improved monetization and broader audience reach.
• Other initiatives where HCL is collaborating with Dex One are:
- Back Office optimization through digital ERP leveraging existing
investments and meeting their objective to create a strong, scalable
backend with a deep data/ analytics capability
- Integration of/ migration to SFDC for their 1,500+ marketing and sales
team
HCL DIFFERENCE
The engagement leveraged the following HCL capabilities, practices, CoEs,
frameworks and competencies for success:
• HCL’s Media and Entertainment practice – Deep-domain competencies,
frameworks and people maturity
- Over 13 years of experience, with 6,000+ people and deep-domain
competencies, helping customers leverage latest industry insights and
trends
- Strong co-creation model with key customers and vertical partners
- Innovation in outsourcing through customizable business models, delivery
approaches, service standards, processes and methodologies for effective
cost optimization
- Product development expertise across mobility, consumer electronics,
telecom, broadcasting and digital marketing
- Technology centers of excellence which include Enterprise Applications,
DW/ BI, CRM/ Salesforce.com, internet/ web technologies and mobility
- Key partnerships with Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco, EMC, Tibco and a host of
micro-vertical focused partnerships
• Digital Media & Publishing Lab – A key investment and technology
commitment:
HCL boasts of a solutions lab, developing solutions for critical client/ industry
issues in all media domains. With an investment of $5 mn and innovation at its
heart, the HCL Media Lab aims to provide technology leadership to the media
and entertainment industry.
The Digital Media & Publishing Lab has 20+ relevant solution frameworks in the
areas of Content Life Cycle Management, Content on Demand, Digital Rights
Management, Digital Asset Management, Cross Media Advertisement
Management, Artist Management, Social Media, Video Content Analytics,
Interoperable Testing and iTV applications. Many of these solutions were used
at Dex One to accelerate the development process and speed-to-market.
• Tool and technology leadership for business advantage:
- Value Creation Portal - An HCL tool for promoting ideation and identifying
potential areas of innovation
- Innovation Dashboard - An analytics and dashboard framework that allows
leaders to assess the health of the project and potential areas of
implementation
- ProcessWatch - HCL’s framework to visualize the business process down to
application and infrastructure, outline constraints, bottlenecks and
redundancies for improvement
- BusinessWare - A systematic Business Case Development framework to
determine the cost-benefit analysis of new digital/ IT initiatives and draw
several “what-if” analyses
- Process Compliance: A comprehensive process compliance framework
(PCI) for ensuring quality assurance across all service lines
• HCL’s state-of-the-art transition framework (ASSeT):
Leveraging HCL’s transition framework ASSeT for Dex One’s transition,
benefitted both Dex One and HCL in several ways:
- Overall tracking and monitoring of the transition through ASSeT transition
monitoring tools
- Structured ASSeT processes and templates for accelerating
documentation, reviews and understanding Dex One’s applications and
processes
- Qualified transition managers to manage schedules, deliverables, risk, cost
and resources
- Seamless transition without any business disruption
} Silent knowledge transition: Any transition always carries a risk of
losing key resources in between the transition period. This adds an
additional burden to accomplish the desired level of knowledge
transition. HCL’s unique concept of “Silent Knowledge Transition” helped
meet these challenges and ensure a seamless zero business disruption
transition.
“Innovation is really the critical component to any engagement, current
innovation creates future value – HCL is doing exactly this for Dex One”, said
Atish Banerjea, SVP and CTO, Dex One Corporation.
BUSINESS BENEFITS
• Cost optimization: HCL’s offshore-driven delivery mechanism: reduction of
overall team size and productivity improvements helped realize cost savings of
over 20% by optimizing and consolidating print IT operations in North Carolina
and India towards a goal of recording $140 mn in cost savings in 2011.
• Digital growth of 30%: Attributed to innovation in mobile, online and digital
media with a new and innovative proposition around reputation management.
• Ensuring minimum disruption to business through a seamless and quick
transition plan and systematic implementation of processes. This centered on
cost improvement, 10% SLA improvement, cycle-time reduction, process
improvement, component reuse, tool development and overall delivery
efficiencies of 20%.
• Boosting business agility and leading to a faster turnaround time by using
the Agile development methodology and providing operational reliability and
flexibility through quick ramp-up of onsite and offshore teams, in a desired
timeframe, with the right-skilled resources.
• Contributing to delivery excellence by establishing and implementing a
well-defined governance methodology and performance metrics.
• Reduced internal headcount by 30% (back-office).
“We brought in HCL in July 2011, and have already seen significant results. We
have reduced internal headcount by 30% and reduced IT operating costs by
over 20%. Additionally, HCL is playing a critical role in several of our new
product development initiatives. This has allowed us to improve the quality of
our digital products and reduce costs”, said Atish Banerjea, SVP and CTO, Dex
One Corporation.
KEY SUCCESS FACTORS
Some key points that have worked well for this relationship are:
• HCL, in collaboration with Dex One was able to demonstrate a superior
understanding of challenges and issues and leverage its experience, process
and frameworks to gain the confidence of key Dex One representatives
• Constant communication established between Dex One and HCL at all times
and stages in this relationship.
• Joint solution development: HCL and Dex One developed the solution jointly
with each of the respective track leads and then presented it to the CTO for
sign-off. HCL enabled a “seamless and zero business disruption” oriented
transition plan.
• HCL recommended and leveraged proactive solutions and continued ideation
aimed at helping Dex One achieve their larger strategic objectives.
• Metrics: A set of 27 core delivery and performance metrics have been defined
for the engagement, which helped measure and ensure quality, process
compliance and schedule management.
• Multi-governance model: HCL set up for Dex One a structured
communications and reporting approach with project level governance,
operational review and regular steering committee meetings.
Key factors at Dex One that led to success include:
- An experienced executive leadership and committed IT leadership that
guided HCL all the way through the engagement ensuring each mile stone of
the journey is a success.
- A team that was ready for significant transformation, they knew they had to
do something different to succeed as a company and they focused on how
to be successful, beating the challenges that came along with significant
change.
Hello, I’m from HCL! We work behind the scenes, helping our customers to shift paradigms and start revolutions. We use digital engineering to build superhuman capabilities. We make sure that the rate of progress far exceeds the price. And right now, 90,000 of us bright sparks are busy developing solutions for 500 customers in 31 countries across the world. How can I help you?
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