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Case study

Digital acceleration in Media

From zero digital assets to market leader.

The challenge

Staying ahead of upcoming players.

This Dutch-founded media brand, RTL, is part of Europe’s largest media conglomerate (10K employees). Like many other established media houses at the time, the MT felt the increasing disruptions within the market closing in on them. They were lagging behind their competition, both new and well-known, and needed to get their organisation back in the game. They were facing three major challenges:

  1. Margins in the core business were small, and getting smaller. Reestablishing balance here was important.
  2. New initiatives were failing. The organisation needed to improve acquisitions and increase the speed of which they were bringing their own initiatives to market.
  3. Because of their reputation as a legacy brand, they were unable to attract the right talent.

Tactics first

Start with technical due diligence.

ONBRDNG knew from the onset that this would be a long-term transformation, spanning a number of years. The last thing you want to do in this case, is start building a new team to blindly set up a bunch of programmes. For this reason, ONBRDNG started with a team of just three consultants on one very solid aspect: Two technical due diligence processes on potential acquisitions; a high profile user-generated content platform, and a weather app which both turned out to be two processes with an extremely successful outcome.

After this, ONBRDNG could quickly move on to the next stages.

Transformation action plan

After a quick scan of the digital capabilities of RTL (technology, data, product and skills), ONBRDNG put together an action plan. The crucial aspect of which was tactics first. Which events would, most likely, take place and was there sufficient usable data available? This ensured that the organisation was able to make smart portfolio choices.

Transformation process

Alongside this, ONBRDNG defined the transformation process with the internal organisation. With a view to enforcing focus and commitment amongst their current workforce,  an essential factor in this phase. One can’t afford for people to drop out early; a large number of them will eventually be expediting the transformation.

Way of working

Together with RTL, ONBRDNG redefined and put the organisational setup in place. Who will take on which role? And where do we need to recruit skills from outside the business? For this, the right balance is essential, because you don’t want to place the responsibility of the core business on external partners. ONBRDNG educated the current team on the skills necessary for their new roles.

Accelerating growth

Let success be the noisemaker.

RTL wanted to stay ahead of upcoming and established players in the market.

Over a three year period:

  1. Exponential digital revenue growth YoY.
  2. MCN (Multi-Channel Network): growth from zero to market leader.
  3. SVOD (Subscription Video On Demand): from concept to launch to growth (from 0 to > 600K subs) reached second highest in The Netherlands on video (after Netflix).
  4. Market leader in The Netherlands for Weather forecasting.
  5. Growth of AVOD (Advertising-based VOD) from 200m streamstarts to over >1bn, second highest in The Netherlands (after YouTube).
  6. Growth of the digital organisation from 25 to over 200 fte. Of which, most were internally promoted and trained.

Team members on this project

Jan Hans Kuipers

Solution architecture

Vincka IZaack

Digital product & E-commerce

Matthijs Buitenhuis

Solution architecture

Marvin Ronk

architecture & development

Patrick Klink

FOUNDER & CEO

Arno Drost

DIGITAL PRODUCT & INSIGHTS

Maros Kyselica

data science & AI/ML

ONBRDNG because…

Although many organisations seem to believe otherwise, transformation doesn’t just happen simply by talking about it. Strategy is important of course, however, true results are achieved by taking action.

  1. By keeping the initial team relatively small, we were able to get the transformation moving quickly.
  2. Tactics first approach.
  3. ONBRDNG itself is a multidisciplinary team, enabling us to support the CDO both top-down and bottom-up on multiple substantive aspects (technology, data, product and skill).

ONBRDNG helps ambitious leaders accelerate digital growth. Get the support you need to turn strategy into action today. We are digital actionists, ready to help.

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