Digital transformation for one of the world’s top news organizations

The challenge

Adapting to rapidly shifting media consumption patterns

New outlets and platforms like Google News, Vox, Facebook News and Snapchat Stories were reshaping the industry. The revolution in the media landscape forced established players to rapidly adapt or slowly and painfully diminish. Facing the very real threat of decline, like so many others, one of the world’s top news organizations Solvd had been partnering for several years, recognized the urgent need to reinvent itself and turned to our team to find the best solution to evolve.  

After analyzing the challenge this company faced, Solvd team suggested them to start the digital transformation that would turn them from a traditional news organization into a software company. This is a fundamental change of identity that not only enabled it to avoid extinction but also positioned it as a pioneer in how news is delivered.  

The primary goal was to provide the company with the tools needed to share content faster and more seamlessly across wider channels, with a high degree of personalization. On practice, it was about migration from outdated legacy systems to an evolved, industry-leading technological state.  

The approach

The shift from a big, siloed CMS into logical subsystems

The core of the business was a content management system (CMS) licensed from another vendor. It pulled content from reporters and produced a PDF for city-block-sized printing machines. The news portal and mobile apps were afterthought, and their content was merely a derivative of the print-oriented production process. 

Our team advised against a traditional “lift and shift” approach to a new CMS. Although this method can appear easier to scope, it often takes so long that the replacement system risks becoming outdated before it even launches.   

At the news outlet, it was essential to determine which capabilities the CMS lacked and which existing capabilities could be made more efficient in the digital realm. These gaps informed a roadmap of small, inexpensive, lightweight modules that could be delivered within months and with minimal budget impact. As soon as one module was identified, engineering began immediately, while additional modules were identified in parallel. Over time, these new modules were designed to surround the old CMS and gradually replace them. This approach allowed the team to learn quickly, correct courses rapidly and avoid repeating mistakes. 

The rapport and trust we had developed over several years of partnership allowed us to work on the client’s infrastructure and the very core of their business. When we got this type of intimate access to their backend API development and looked at their systems, it became obvious the technical options were limited. Every day the system was in maintenance for an hour and new content could not be deployed, negatively affecting the subscribers’ experience. It was clear to us that the company needed to fully transform its systems to be able to easily add the most cutting-edge technologies on the market and be accessible to its consumers every hour of every day of the year. 

The team left the media company’s existing CMS in place like an old tree and built the various modules around it like a fig tree’s roots. Some of the modules were designed to replace tasks the old CMS performed. Others performed new tasks it could not accomplish, such as omni-channel distribution of content across all social media platforms, gathering real-time reader statistics, or addressing video delivery issues with code that could easily be plugged into articles and other content. 

With Solvd support, the client launched these new subsystems into production in parallel to the client’s existing CMS, and they soon became the new standard. These smaller modules made traditional features of the old CMS obsolete and allowed us to safely decommission them. The former one-size-fits-all approach for their content across all platforms was replaced with this new concept of optimizing content for its destination. The team kept replicating the same approach with other pieces of their business, such as images, article production, live news coverage, irregular news events requiring specific media and new formats of illustrating complex topics, optimizing the entire portfolio of processes by making the ensemble smarter and nimbler to orchestrate. 

In the end, a few dozen relatively small, lightweight modules that were easier to maintain and enhance independently made up the core of the news organization without causing downtime or straining the client’s budget. Its technical options were now virtually unlimited, and its continuing transformation had unlocked many opportunities to experiment with technical and business model innovations. 

Optimizing the delivery 

Improving the client’s digital response time was essential. Before the CMS transformation, pages took several seconds to load, which was far too slow for a modern news audience. Faster load times became a competitive advantage, boosting visibility through search and social algorithms that prioritize speed. Without changing any content or staff, the client saw increased engagement, more social shares and a higher number of paying subscribers. 

After optimizing content delivery, we modernized deployments through gradual automation. This removed human bottlenecks and enabled updates to roll out safely within minutes. Predictable, repeatable processes reduced risk and freed teams to focus on strategic work. The client expanded its engineering capabilities by integrating software talent into the newsroom.  

To the cloud

To future-proof operations, we recommended moving the client’s systems to the cloud—a new territory for an organization used to on-premise data centers. Cloud infrastructure offered scalability, ready-made services, and flexibility that eliminated the need to rebuild tools in-house. It also allowed individual components (such as video processing) to be optimized independently and cost-effectively using on-demand compute power. As a result, the cloud provided more than hosting; it became the foundation for ongoing optimization and seamless communication between systems.  

Digital destiny

Every company has unique intellectual property, and owning the software behind it is key to owning its digital future. Our client shifted from licensing external systems to building modular components that supported its core strength—content creation. This evolution was driven by leadership commitment and a strategy of small, low-risk iterations rather than high-stakes overhauls. 

The outcome

Modernized technology, increased subscriber base and a foundational shift in corporate identity

As a result of this transformation, the legacy systems were replaced without interrupting daily business and the organization was able to deliver the most relevant content to its audience in the format that best suited each user. 

This reinvention not only significantly increased its subscriber base and industry prestige but also created an entirely new revenue stream that did not exist before its transformation. 

The digital transformation of this client went beyond simply updating its systems and instead resulted in a complete shift in corporate identity. The organization successfully transitioned from thinking, “We are a news company,” to operating as, “We are a technology company that happens to have a newsroom full of reporters.”