Capgemini Super Techies Show Season 3 - The New York Times Challenge

Use technology to rationalize print and digital legacy systems and Use technology to rationalize print and digital legacy systems and create a unified workflow that can be applied to historical data and create a unified workflow that can be applied to historical data and referenced for all future data needsreferenced for all future data needs

The New York Times ChallengeThe New York Times Challenge

2Copyright © Capgemini 2014. All Rights Reserved

Capgemini Super Techies Show Season 3- NYT Challenge

The Facts

Founded in 1861, the New York Times (NYT) is the most trusted and respected source of news in the world

No longer solely a newspaper company, NYT now has a significant, global digital presence

The worldwide print circulation of the NYT, including that of the International New York Times, is commendably high as is their digital reach on the web and mobile

Like many companies in the midst of a digital transformation, NYT’s business information is spread across a disparate collection of systems—from aging mainframes to cloud-based <please insert appropriate term here>



Background on Challenge

The New York Times is committed to becoming a data-driven organization

To use, re-use, exploit and govern their many data assets, NYT must rationalize them

Rationalization includes establishing relationships between metadata across systems

To establish these relationships, NYT should first be able to locate their metadata

Metadata collation requires consistent nomenclature, applied within a centralized system



Background on Challenge – Situation Analysis

This challenge represents a real business problem for the New York Times

Thus, NYT focuses the Capgemini Super Techies challenge on advertising systems and workflow with emphasis on sales pipeline management, forecasting, order entry and billing

Forecasting is currently an extremely manual process involving continual communication between sales reps and sales management

Historical information, which is used to validate forecasts and create year-over-year comparisons, resides in separate international and domestic (US) systems for both print and digital

Actual business results, required to update forecasts on a monthly basis, are contained in a separate financial system



Background on Challenge – Situation Analysis

Forecasts must be able to segment the business by industry category and region, beginning at the individual-account level

Accounts may be agencies or clients or both; there is no fixed nomenclature for either

Accounts are assigned to one or more sales persons in order to determine commissions; revenue per account is assigned proportionally if multiple sales persons are involved

There is no consistent taxonomy within and between legacy systems for naming accounts or agencies; in essence, people manually normalize the data between these legacy systems



The Problem

The current system for forecasting and reporting advertising sales revenue is inefficient and time-consuming as it relies heavily on manual processes and legacy systems

Transformation to an automated system is desirable but requires a consistent taxonomy to rationalize the metadata within and between systems



The Challenge Statement

Suggest a solution that allows the New York Times to effectively automate advertising sales forecasting

Use technology to normalize the metadata within print and digital legacy systems and create a unified workflow that can be applied to historical data and scales to all future data needs



The Challenge Statement - Details

The system should be resilient to data scarcity and be smart enough to identify fields where manual input is desirable

Mapping should be a supervised automated process that incorporates machine learning to achieve scale

Solution should include a method for adapting internal taxonomies to achieve more granular metadata

Solution must allow for the introduction of new metadata



Important Points to Remember

Data reconciliation need only go back 10 years in time, with special importance placed on making sure that client accounts and affiliated data are normalized

Any external taxonomies that we can be borrowed from or adopted should be identified and incorporated into the solution where applicable

The business process suggested as a solution to this challenge should be adaptable to comparable business challenges throughout NYT (for example, metadata associated with their published news stories)



General Pointers

• Time allotted for solution presentation: Teams will be given 20 minutes for a detailed presentation to judges (off-camera) and 3 minutes for a high-level pitch (on-camera)

• Mentor consultation: - Call: Teams will have access to a 30-min audio call with a Capgemini expert; the

teams are expected to keep questions ready for the call in advance- Email: Additionally, teams can send one email with questions to the expert anytime

before the final solution submissionTip: Mentors will take at least 48 hours to revert; therefore, the earlier the questions are sent, the better

• CXO interaction: - Call: All teams will get to be part of a 30–45 min audio call with the CXO of NYT;

during the call, teams can direct questions pertaining to the challenge to the CXO- Date and time of the call: To be confirmed

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The information contained in this presentation is proprietary.© 2014 Capgemini. All rights reserved. Rightshore® is a trademark belonging to Capgemini.

About Capgemini

With more than 130,000 people in over 40 countries, Capgemini is one of the world's foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services. The Group reported 2013 global revenues of EUR 10.1 billion.Together with its clients, Capgemini creates and delivers business and technology solutions that fit their needs and drive the results they want. A deeply multicultural organization, Capgemini has developed its own way of working, the Collaborative Business ExperienceTM, and draws on Rightshore ®, its worldwide delivery model.

Technology

Capgemini Super Techies Show Season 3 - The New York Times Challenge