{"id":7930,"date":"2024-01-12T10:20:33","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T10:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/?post_type=case_studies&#038;p=7930"},"modified":"2025-01-14T15:02:09","modified_gmt":"2025-01-14T15:02:09","slug":"creating-a-data-plaform-for-a-major-uk-media-organisation","status":"publish","type":"case_studies","link":"https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/case-studies\/creating-a-data-plaform-for-a-major-uk-media-organisation\/","title":{"rendered":"Creating a data platform for a major UK media organisation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<section id=\"block_e673f4291f2b0bbf4029cd3c9ccdb630\" class=\"block intro-row animate  default\">\n    <div class='intro-row-wrap'>\n        <h2 class=\"h3\">This UK-based digital media organisation had been deploying a series of digital products to capitalise on shifting consumer behaviours with media consumption.\n<\/h2><div class=\"left_col\">\n<div class=\"text_content\">\n<p><strong>Although these digital products had built-in advertising and monetisation, there was still a need to enhance personalisation and expand their capability.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"full_content dark_blue_bg\">\n<div class=\"media_block\">\n<div class=\"right_col\">\n<div class=\"text_content\">\n<p>The ability to make marketing more targeted through features such as in-app recommendations, customisation and real-time activation were vital parts of the strategy to improve the overall customer experience across the digital products.<\/p>\n<p>In this case study, we explain how Oakland created a customer data platform for long-term innovation with the finished products and their internal delivery capabilities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"right_col\">\n<p class=\"text_content\">\n<\/div>\n            <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text is-stacked-on-mobile\"><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/oakland-4-small.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7933 size-full\"\/><\/figure><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Subscriber growing pains<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The media company had struggled to increase its subscriber base within its digital products group and was losing out on advertising revenue to competing products and formats.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This demand for growth and competitive advantage created urgency and an aggressive timeline for the business to develop and deploy new capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Central to the revised architecture and direction of this new capability was the need for a customer data platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next challenge was finding a partner to help build the platform.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<section id=\"block_eeef37bd8caa8ea35a2bd71875171473\" class=\"background-container  block background-container-6a1965f479d44159678628\">\n    <style>\n                .background-container-6a1965f479d44159678628 {\n                            --block-bg-color: #ff0033;\n                                        --heading-color: #ffffff;\n                                        --block-text-color: #ffffff;\n                    }\n    <\/style>\n    <div class=\"container\">\n        \n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Partnering with Oakland<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The media company was looking for a partner to work side-by-side with their existing team, one who could provide data engineering and DataOps, whilst helping the media company scale and meet its longer-term delivery needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because the company lacked internal DataOps skills, it needed a partner with the right experience to help upskill its existing data engineers in DevOps and DataOps best practices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Oakland\u2019s unique expertise and delivery background provided the ideal choice.<\/p>\n\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-media-text has-media-on-the-right is-stacked-on-mobile\"><div class=\"wp-block-media-text__content\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Building the right foundation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Oakland started with a cross-functional team of architects, engineers, and DevOps\/DataOps engineers to support the build of the customer data platform.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The team architected the data infrastructure and integration components using cloud-native tooling to enable real-time data ingestion, persistence, and movement. These components helped to drive the personalisation and recommendation capabilities of the company\u2019s digital products.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Following data architecture alignment, Oakland data engineers then focused on building robust data pipelines and scalable repositories for the movement and landing of data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DevOps engineers helped increase the platform\u2019s scale and speed through an \u2018infrastructure as code\u2019 approach \u2013 eliminating unnecessary manual administration and bottlenecks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Working closely with the in-house DevOps team, Oakland helped assure that a continuous integration and delivery (CI\/CD) pipeline was also structured and deployed.<\/p>\n<\/div><figure class=\"wp-block-media-text__media\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"728\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Picture4.jpg-728x1024.webp\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7934 size-full\" srcset=\"https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Picture4.jpg-728x1024.webp 728w, https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Picture4.jpg-512x720.webp 512w, https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Picture4.jpg-213x300.webp 213w, https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Picture4.jpg-768x1080.webp 768w, https:\/\/weareoakland.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Picture4.jpg.webp 987w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 728px) 100vw, 728px\" \/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n<section id=\"block_82edddeae5210d4aa99d6bedb2e300c1\" class=\"background-container  block background-container-6a1965f479f4a413715837\">\n    <style>\n                .background-container-6a1965f479f4a413715837 {\n                            --block-bg-color: #303e48;\n                                        --heading-color: #ffffff;\n                                        --block-text-color: #ffffff;\n                    }\n    <\/style>\n    <div class=\"container\">\n        \n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Hitting a clear target<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>As part of upskilling and internal capability building, the Oakland team also developed a Target Operating Model (TOM), along with key recommendations for how the company should shape its rapidly growing DataOps function.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For a team that was quickly increasing its skills and headcount, adopting an operating model became critical to success, providing gains such as:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2022 Greater control and governance across the delivery cycle<br>\u2022 More streamlined and insightful execution<br>\u2022 Better reporting, KPIs and performance tracking<br>\u2022 Increased clarity over the functional split and handoffs between teams<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Target Operating Model provided clear areas of investigation for making the newly created function even more effective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Through significant effort, collaboration, and resource expertise, the combined Oakland and client team deployed a functional minimum viable product (MVP) in 3 months, integrating a range of data sources and driving real-time data movement with persistence across a modern cloud technology stack.<\/p>\n\n\n    <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How did the media company benefit from the Oakland experience?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transforming the team<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Oakland helped the client product teams transform their non centralised delivery model into a fully centralised, world class IT\/DevOps capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With a comprehensive Target Operating Model in place, underpinned by a common tech stack and modern, robust architecture, the client could finally scale development and delivery without the risk of slipping deadlines or sacrificing the solution quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our novel and effective setup allowed every engineer in the team to effortlessly deploy and test new code in a live environment simultaneously \u2013 without conflict or unwanted side effects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The technical lead can easily approve any pending code changes, ensuring the rapid deployment of any number of authorised and quality-checked features into their target environments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transforming the product and customer experience<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Across the digital product suite, the client was finally able to achieve its key ambitions of:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Improved marketing and targeting performance<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Far greater in-app personalisation<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Real-time activation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>All through exploiting its next generation customer data platform and world-class delivery capability.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Subscriber growing pains The media company had struggled to increase its subscriber base within its digital products group and was losing out on advertising revenue to competing products and formats. This demand for growth and competitive advantage created urgency and an aggressive timeline for the business to develop and deploy new capabilities. Central to the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":7931,"template":"","case_studies_category":[397],"class_list":["post-7930","case_studies","type-case_studies","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","case_studies_category-platformanddataengineering"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.2 (Yoast SEO v27.2) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Creating a Data Platform for a Major UK Media Organisation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How Oakland worked with a media organisation to enhance personalisation, in-app recommendations, and real-time activation to boost targeted marketing and improve customer experience.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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