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Case Study: BBC - Audience Data Systems

Assignment

BBC Technology (BBCT) supplies BBC Marketing and Communications Directorate with Audience Data Services to allow them to measure and analyse viewing figures for all BBC and commercial broadcasting operations for the UK.

This covers BBC public service and commercial channels, UK regional channels, satellite TV, Cable TV, Radio amongst others. The combination of multi channel services, non-trivial analyses, mixed systems environment and business dependence result in a complex set of systems to support this service.

The audience information is provided via a number of IT outputs including Windows and web browser interfaces.

Solution

Following the creation of BBCT in April 2001, BBCT is contracted via a commercial Service Level Agreement (SLA) to supply Audience services to BBC M&C. BBCT have subcontracted JADe to operate this SLA and have full responsibility for these crucial systems. The SLA is structured as a fixed price annual contract plus jointly determined mini projects on an ad-hoc basis to cover investigations and enhancements that fall outside the scope of the SLA.

This approach provides a cost effective SLA with the option to enhance the offering in areas that provide real business benefit.

JADe operates a flexible relationship with BBCT. JADe has at least one consultant permanently on-site integrated into the BBCT ADS support team. This support coordinator ensures a responsive service to the customer and coordinates day-to-day ADS activities with the ADS systems manager.

Backing up the on-site JADe Support Coordinator is a team of JADe consultants whose expertise can be sought on an ad-hoc basis to service the SLA. For example, the Support Coordinator would be expected to use a specialist DBA for database work. This on-site generalist presence backed up with off-site specialist expertise appears to work well for both JADe and the customer.

Result

The main benefits are:-

• It is fixed price so provides for more effective budget planning.
• The SLA has effectively replaced a diverse team of permanent and freelance consultants with consequent savings in cost, a reduction in management effort and the freeing up of those personnel for other duties.
• JADe has undertaken to supply all the skill sets requires to service the SLA. This includes the SIR DBMS and legacy Solaris administration that has proved problematic in the past. JADe ownership of this issue frees the client to concentrate on business benefits rather than technical problems.

Key Technologies

Sun Solaris, Unix scripting, Pascal, C, SIR DBMS, SIR PQL scripts, HTML, Perl, MS Access, MS Excel macros, MS Visual Basic, MS SQL Serve