Cognizant with British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

BBC Monitoring, a department of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), operates globally to observe, understand and explain open source media throughout the world, providing accessible and relevant information and insights for the BBC, Her Majesty’s Government and commercial clients worldwide, to help them make better, more informed decisions.

Rapidly changing customer expectations from both inside the public organisation itself and external commercial and noncommercial clients, meant a massive change was required if BBC Monitoring was to remain relevant and competitive.

Additionally, unexpected changes in the financial climate and reductions in funding, triggered the need to both reduce costs, whilst meeting existing commitments, and grow commercial income.

Realising that its environment was constantly changing, BBC Monitoring working with Cognizant, opted for an ‘agile transformation’ approach to address the challenges. Cognizant worked closely with BBC Monitoring as a change partner initially forming a strong ‘blended team’. Cognizant’s Programme and Project Managers, Solution Lead, Technology Consultant and Data Architect, a Communications and Customer lead, complementing BBC Monitoring’s internal team of subject matter experts, were leveraged to lead and orchestrate the overall transformation programme while embedding an agile culture.

The Cognizant Consulting team proposed an ‘enterprise agile approach’ to iteratively disrupt, define and implement the future operating model, enabling both immediate business impact and the ability to continually adapt.

The result was the formation of a user centric flexible target operating model, that has not only enabled BBC Monitoring to deliver new capabilities which enabled real business results but it has transformed the way the organisation can respond to change in the future.

To formulate the future operating model, a tested ‘Diverge-Converge’ approach was used, allowing for a time-boxed phase during which all ideas were accepted and considered. Using a range of tools and techniques, four very distinctive scenarios for BBC Monitoring’s future business and organisation have emerged.

Following on from this blue sky thinking and analysing each of the four scenarios, the team converged towards a single view of a recommended operating model through iterations of disrupting, defining and implementing elements of the model.

This has not only enabled BBC Monitoring to deliver new capabilities which enabled real business results but it has transformed the way the organisation can respond to change in the future. Further, since the introduced changes, there has been a 30% decrease in the cost and contribution from license fee payers. At the same time Monitoring’s contribution to BBC’s live news has increased and te commerciailisation of output has been strengthened through a new platform which saw an increase of active signed-in users by 150% and new innovative products and services.