Business Snapshot
3 Million
Multi - National viewers
8
Countries
€300 +Million
Annual Revenue
Overview
For over five years, our client, an international television provider, has partnered with ValueLabs to modernize its platform, migrate new acquisitions into its IT estate, deliver new products and services, and manage end-to-end technology projects. What started as two developers working on a migration has now turned into a strategic partnership, with multiple cross-functional teams dedicated to helping our client deliver entertainment to a modern, demanding audience.
Our client is a Luxembourg-based television provider, serving approximately three million customers across eight countries. Its goal is to take TV out of the ordinary, meeting consumers’ rapidly changing viewing habits by distributing diverse content that can be watched anytime, anywhere. However, a complex international ecosystem consisting of several brands, each with its own business rules, systems and components, requires highly flexible and scalable technology solutions.
A partnership five years in the making
For over five years, ValueLabs has been helping our client solve its technical challenges, ensure seamless service delivery, and migrate new acquisitions into its IT environment.
This work includes unifying IT platforms across brands and borders, improving online service performance, simplifying payment processes, and deploying cutting edge analytics to unlock new insights into viewer behavior.
In 2020 alone, ValueLabs helped the client deliver over 20 projects, providing end-to-end services from ideation, product development, analytics and process automation, to DevOps, deployment and aftercare support.
It’s a highly collaborative OneCompany® relationship, with multi-shore teams set up in strategic locations dedicated to helping improve the client’s platform around the clock.
Services Involved
Development
Experience
Engineering
Intelligence
Management
Marketing
Business Impact
Product development
ValueLabs put a great deal of work into identifying the issues with our existing CMS system
50% Faster
load times
2x more
content uploaded
Lower licensing costs
Improved SEO ranking
The client’s relationship with ValueLabs began in 2014 with a migration of its CMS systems. The company originally used Ektron as its CMS solution, but it was only utilizing around 10 percent of the platform’s capabilities and was encountering various problems along the way.
Difficulty publishing and updating content was not only causing delays and frustrations within internal teams, but also hindering the customer experience with slow website loading times – a major problem in the online streaming age.
After conducting an internal review with the client’s business teams, ValueLabs recommended a migration to Umbraco, a powerful, flexible open-source CMS system that would help accelerate performance, reduce costs and improve security.
Our client says, “ValueLabs put a great deal of work into identifying the issues with our existing CMS system.”
During the demo of the new solution, page response times went from five to six seconds to under one second over 99 percent of the time, and application load times are now 50% faster overall. What’s more, content managers found posting new content a breeze, with a more streamlined approach meaning they could double the number of deployments a month. As an added bonus, the client also saves a significant amount on licensing costs. And SEO-friendly features in Umbraco have improved the Google ranking of the company’s websites.
User experience: Streamlining payments for millions of customers
ValueLabs was able to redesign the checkout flow to improve conversions using the Adyen payment platform.
8 brand websites
Seamless experiences across
3 steps to 1
Payments reduced from
Improved cart conversions
and fewer abandonments
Another major challenge facing our client was its outdated payment system. Upon checkout, users would be redirected to a payment portal and then to their bank website. This three-step process resulted in a lot of customer drop-off, and many didn’t return to the site. In fact, only one percent of customers completed the checkout process.
“After conducting in-depth UX research, ValueLabs was able to redesign the checkout flow to improve conversions using the Adyen payment platform. By allowing payments to take place in-app, either on desktop, mobile or Smart TVs, ValueLabs was able to provide a seamless and unified experience for every client brand – each of which has its own website.”
So far, the UX work ValueLabs has undertaken for this client has seen the company win both the Muse GOLD and Vega Platinum industry awards.
Analytics and automation: gaining actionable insights for exceptional experiences
ValueLabs modernize and migrate the client’s outdated manual reporting to a web-based Tableau portal.Quick access
to vital information through web-based platforms
Faster reporting times
and zero formatting issues
0 manual dependency
For any modern, customer-facing service, data is an essential and powerful asset—and our client has no shortage of customer data. However, its analytics team initially only captured basic information, and drawing insights from that data proved challenging.
Through conversations with ValueLabs, the client was able to find a way to turn that data into information, so it could see valuable patterns like customer age and spending habits through easy-to-use dashboards.
One element of this saw ValueLabs modernize and migrate the client’s outdated manual reporting to a web-based Tableau portal. Tableau reports provide access to current and historical data, along with key performance measures of CRM data at both a summary and detailed level – including details of new customers and their activities.
With Tableau, multiple users can access the insights they need quickly and easily through a URL. The manual effort involved has completely been eliminated which saves us a lot of time, and access to both current and historical data gives us a much better picture of our customers.”
ValueLabs was also able to modernize the client’s legacy Crystal reports, instead delivering enhanced reports through SSRS. As with Tableau, multiple users are now able to access these reports through a web URL, formatting issues cause by the legacy platform have been eliminated, and reporting times are far faster.
One insight the client was able to glean from these updates, was that its users were spending a lot of time scrolling through content that they didn’t want to engage with. For a streaming service, this is extremely problematic, so ValueLabs was tasked with finding a way to recommend more appropriate content for users. The result was a redesign of the client’s entire UX.
A true technology partnership
Multi-shore
delivery model
Seamless delivery
across teams and geographies
A truly strategic
partnership
For any company that requires its online services and communications to be second to none, factors like web performance, in-depth analytics and a consistent, intuitive UX are all vital elements of success. Our client’s continued relationship with ValueLabs ensures these capabilities are delivered – which means no more fragmented user experiences, slow loading times, CMS bottlenecks, or payment difficulties. Instead, the client has seen seamless customer experiences and streamlined internal processes from a partnership that continues to evolve.
Today, that partnership sees ValueLabs proactively identify room for improvement in the client’s IT landscape, with a dedicated technical architect, project manager and dev and test lead overseeing regular technology and process improvements. This dedication and understanding of the client’s business, along with the seamless delivery of services, despite teams working on different tasks in different locations, allows the client to move in new directions and meet new demands whenever they arise.
ValueLabs knows our business, our culture and our technology—and knows how to help us get the most from our investments. Over our five-year relationship we’ve truly come to think of them as an extension of our team.”
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