Adapting to Market Changes: News International's Successful Tech Transformation with Deloitte (Full Transcript)

Speaker 1: News International faces challenging market conditions. We're operating in an environment where technology is changing all the time. We need to be able to adapt and change our business model to suit market conditions as they move forward.

Speaker 2: We had some enormous challenges. We had a lot of systems and processes in our business which were totally outdated. Our product portfolio and proposition are changing all the time and our systems just haven't.

Speaker 1: And what we needed to do was to try and find a method of enabling new processes and new systems to be deployed to our sales teams as effectively as possible without significantly changing the way that they operate on a day-to-day basis. Aside from being nice people, it made sense to use a team that already had some experience at both media and News International's business. Deloitte had done some very good work as part of our business change programme, developing a new operating model.

Speaker 2: It was a competitive pitch, but I think what Deloitte demonstrated really was their understanding of our business. They really got their heads around and made it their business to get into our culture as well.

Speaker 3: I had this idea of Deloitte being quite a stuffy consultancy. But actually what I got was a group of quite relaxed individuals who were very keen to understand the team dynamics overall. They had a very good understanding of our requirements as a technology team, but more importantly they understood the importance of what we were doing to the business.

Speaker 1: So the commercial workspace was conceived as a method of drawing together all of the tools that a salesperson needs on a day-to-day basis into one environment so that we can make their lives as easy as possible.

Speaker 3: We now have a system in the business that a group of salespeople are using comfortably and we are now rolling out that solution to the rest of the business.

Speaker 2: We surface all of our systems and processes through the OnePiece now and the OnePortal. It meant that it took the complicated process of saying, and by the way we're changing this, and by the way we're changing that, away and saying actually all you have to do is get your heads around one piece of kit and we'll just serve everything through it.

Speaker 3: And having successfully delivered the project I can say that the Deloitte and NI partnership that was in place was a very good one.

Speaker 2: We managed to move into a really positive space and working with Deloitte and Salesforce and the team involved, I think this rollout has gone incredibly well.

Speaker 1: So how would I describe the Deloitte team I work with? Confident.

Speaker 2: Approachable.

Speaker 1: Very professional.

Speaker 2: Efficient. Easy to do business with.

Speaker 1: Hardworking.

Speaker 2: And collaborative. They have really got their heads into our culture and made the whole process straightforward.

Speaker 1: It's been probably the most successful technology deployment that we've had over the last few years.