Stop the press

When the Telegraph transformed itself from being a print publication to a digitally led web innovator it became front page news in the IT world. Diana Milne meets CIO Paul Cheesbrough to find out the truth behind the headlines.

“Resistance to change is human nature”
-Paul Cheesbrough

When Paul Cheesbrough was charged with heading up the digitalisation of the UK's most conservative newspaper, introducing new technology was the easy bit. His biggest challenge was convincing a roomful of the country's top journalists and a readership with an average age of 55 that digital media is the future.  But with, revenue plummeting across the UK print industry - including a three percent fall in profits at the Telegraph in 2009 -  he had no choice but to make it work: "The cultural change is always the toughest part of making any change," he says.  "For us as a news organisation, making sure the change happened was critical. The industry as a whole was having to go through this change as a matter of course to help their business go forward. So I think people understood the commercial realities of the situation." While other UK newspapers have been slower to embrace the digital revolution, the Telegraph has become a leading innovator in web publishing, transforming itself from being print dominated to being predominantly digital-led. To the outside world this means improved online content and greater opportunities for interaction. Interally though the changes have involved a complete overhaul of existing IT systems to a cloud based infrastructure to facilitate greater agility, better use of multi media tools and improved internal communication. This has included the introduction of software as a service (SaaS) applications such as salesforce.com, the replacement of Microsoft applications with the Google Apps suite, and the introduction of a cloud based HR management system.

Embracing change

Naturally there was initial resistance to these changes within the organisation, but says Cheesbrough, he received valuable support for his plans from the Telegraph's Editor-in Chief, Will Lewis: "Resistance to change is human nature. The key advantage we had was an inspirational Editor-in-Chief in Will who was leading from the front. And he just made it incredibly clear as to why digital is our future. If we had an editor who said the newspaper is the future we would have had a very different response and reaction from the staff." The result of this support from the editor is that, according to Cheesbrough, the Telegraph's journalists now think digital when writing their news stories: "The cultural change we've been through was probably one of the most challenging things for any news organisation to go through. But the digital side of the business is now entirely front of mind when they are thinking about a story and how they can tell it and communicate it."

One of the biggest cultural barriers Cheesbrough had to overcome when introducing the changes was the age old divide between the commercial and creative sides of the newspaper business. The Telegraph's digital reinvention was initiated with a view to it becoming more commercially viable whilst retaining its editorial integrity and raison d'etre. To ensure the two aims didn't clash and to ensure the best use was made of multi media platforms as a way of telling news stories, Will Lewis was put in charge of both the editorial and commercial sides of the digital business. Describing the divide between the two sides of the business Cheesbrough says: "It's a healthy tension I think. You don't want one to dominate the other. We're there to make money at the end of the day but also the editorial integrity is very important. Last year we put commercial responsibility for the digital business underneath the editor, so when we look at integration, it's much more than just the newsroom side. We're looking to integrate the commercial side of what we do as well."

He is keen to stress too that editorial content is only one part of what the Telegraph Media Group actually produces. He wants every part of the organisation to embrace digitalisation - including the retail side of the business: "The overarching transformation that we're in the midst of is really taking us towards being a digitally led organisation that happens to have a newspaper. Content is only one part of our business. We're also a retailer in the sense that we sell holidays and gardening equipment for instance." One major advantage of digitalisation, which satisfies both the commercial and editorial sides of the business, is that it massively widens the newpaper's audience, allowing the content to be accessed from anywhere in the world, without the limitations of printed copies. Online, the Telegraph's biggest audience is now in the US and within the UK it is already attracting a younger readership - a key aim of its digitalisation strategy. "One advantage is that geographically we've got a much wider appeal. In terms of audience we've also brought appeal into other age groups and segments in the UK as well. We do seem to have attracted a younger audience online which would have been difficult we were just simply a newspaper." However he says the TMO is very keen not to alienate its traditional readership, so is working on promotional schemes to retain reader loyalty, in tandem with its digital strategy: "It's something we take really seriously, so with every change we make in print or online, we try not to alienate any of our readers and customers. One example of what we are doing for our traditional customers is that we've utilised things like subscription offers and promotions. We've also got things like loyalty schemes that we're launching at the moment where people who are long-term readers get rewarded. Retaining those customers is absolutely key for us. We're trying to build on what we've got rather than replace what we've got.

Behind the scenes

Underpinning the Telegraph's digital transformation are the sweeping changes that have been made to its internal IT systems, most significantly the move to the cloud for its back office processes. The first step in the process was to move the entire group's 14,00 users over to Google Apps. This was followed by the move to the Salesforce.com CRM system for its sales and call centre teams. "The key benefit we've achieved from the cloud, is that we're now a much more agile organisation," says Cheesbrough. "By plugging into web based systems rather than having a long start up for putting those systems in and a huge expense upfront you can get going almost immediately with them. We've seen cost efficiencies that we've been able to reinvest in some of the areas that are growing the business rather than just sinking it all into IT systems." He goes on to say that under the previous system 95 percent of the company's staff time and money was spent on operational processes. This has now been reduced to 50 percent, freeing up 45 percent of resources for developing new revenue streams.

Cost efficiency is not however the only driver behind the TMG's IT overhaul. The introduction of Google Apps across the organisation has significantly benefited the company's internal and external communications and document sharing abilities. But, as Cheesbrough explains, the deployment almost happened by accident: "We put Google Apps in as a trial initially when we were looking to renew our contract with Microsoft. At that time we only took it to ten percent of the company. But the approval rates within the company once we'd trialled it were so big that we started to look at it seriously for the rest of the company." Further investigation revealed that over a three-year period using Microsoft would cost the company five times more than Google. Moreover it offered editorial staff major advantages, says Cheesbrough: "It's basic things like having a 25 gigabit inbox to store your emails and files in rather than having a limit of 150 megabites that a lot of companies impose. Being able to search through all your emails using Google's powerful search engine and the ability to collaborate and share using Google's inbuilt messenger are also big advantages. That allows you to see who is online and offline and send them instant messages. You can create documents despite being in different locations and share them rather than having to email them. These were all big advantages in addition to the significant financial benefits."

Despite approaching the end of the technology transformation project, which has been three years in the making, Cheesbrough is planning yet more improvements on the IT front, in particular to improve the way the company manages its data and to focus on the company's further ongoing digital development. "We're doing a number of projects with a number of leading edge technology companies to improve the way that we manage our data to make sure it's more accessible within the newsroom. Because like many organisations we've still got groups of systems that don't talk to each other so we're trying to connect those together so, if you're a journalist, regardless of where the information sits you can go to one place and find it. The other thing we're really ramping up is the focus on digital development, so looking at new products and services we can launch alongside telegraph.co.uk to help us make more money."

The speed with which the TMG has succeeded in transforming itself from a traditionalist print led publication to a leader in the digital field is headline-making stuff in itself. But while readers will have noticed big changes, it is the internal cultural shift that is the project's greatest achievement. Because as Cheesbrough puts it, where technology was once a "lights on operational division in a back room" it is now "an enabler for the business" and crucial to its future viability and economic survival.

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About Telegraph Media Group

Telegraph Media Group is the multi-media news publisher of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, Telegraph.co.uk and The Telegraph - a weekly subscription publication for The Telegraph's overseas audience. The Daily Telegraph is the UK's biggest selling quality newspaper, with an average daily circulation of 835,000 (ABC June 09). Telegraph Media Group has put digital at the heart of its business and recently won Digital Publisher 2009 at the Association of Online Publishers' annual awards.

Since being the first UK newspaper to have a website in 1994, the group has constantly innovated in the digital environment to bring new products to its audience. Telegraph TV provides a wide range of quality programmes on Telegraph.co.uk, whilst the Telegraph's mobile site in 2009 enables users to access its content from a variety of mobile devices.