NCB | Automated document management
To maintain and grow its position as the assurance and certification partner of choice to the UK rail industry, NCB needed to update existing inefficient IT systems for managing assessment service delivery.
Creating a low-code application for managing competition and voting campaigns
ITV, the UK’s largest and oldest commercial television company, broadcasts shows across a network of 15 regional licenses. Traditional television broadcasters face more competition than ever before as viewers access content in new formats, from digital services and on different devices. It’s more important than ever that the established broadcasters offer a superior experience.
In response to the digital disruption they were facing, they wanted to implement a large-scale drive for operational excellence. Almost 100 business users were involved in the initial process improvement drive as it was important to keep the team engaged with the project. Liberty Create, our low-code platform, enabled the team take control without a digital coding background.
“It was great to actually go to Netcall and design the system ourselves in Create, rather than list a whole load of requirements and send them off to a developer.”
Jane Laurence
Head of Specialist Broadcast Schedules, ITV
Using Liberty Create to build full-stack apps is between 3-10 times faster than traditional development. It has a drag-and-drop interface so it’s easy to handle data and workflow processes to build apps that deliver great user experience.
Starting by developing the platform in a Create Innovation Lab, the ITV team could do small-scale experimentation with process design. In two days, they had built a fully functional prototype. The final product was built within weeks, without having spent months waiting in the IT queue.
It’s easier to develop new applications, so more people can build applications. After their training, ITV’s pool of developers was instantly bigger. Without the need for coding knowledge, business users and IT could collaborate to tackle ITV’s needs to rapidly innovate using low-code.
With Liberty Create, departments are now largely self-sufficient and able to make changes to their process management systems without being reliant on IT or outside developers. Traditional IT resources can be utilised in more complex business areas. The process owners are actively involved in the operational excellence of their departments.
Using Liberty Create has proved to be a successful part of the drive for operational excellence. The process owners can keep improving their systems in a low-cost, low-risk environment.
They can use it for all sorts of projects. To address functionality gaps between existing systems. The powerful integration capabilities means that their applications are not built in functional silos – instead, they’re joined up to provide the reach and scale that ITV need.
ITV’s initial low-code project was created by the Interactive Team, handling viewer competitions and coordinates voting for reality shows such as ‘The X Factor’. After their training in Liberty Create, the team had the skills to develop a workflow and bespoke forms system.
The team built a single platform, allowing for a holistic view of the status of a campaign.
Then, Create was used in the Broadcast Distribution Team to involve their operational users with improving their own technology, without relying on central IT resources.
Starting by developing the platform in a Create Innovation Lab, the team began small-scale experimentation with process design. In two days, they had built a fully functional prototype.
Next, the Duty Manager’s Office platform, which must alert the rest of the network when an incident occurs on air (for example, the broadcast cutting out) and coordinate a solution. Using Create, the team developed a standardised, single platform for incident management, to automatically send text and email alerts within 10 seconds of an incident report.
“Low-code allows us to experiment, to try out some of our improvement ideas. Other parts of ITV have similar requirements, so we hope to see adoption of this low-code approach spread elsewhere in the business. Low-cost, low-risk experiments help validate improvement and innovation ideas, so we can keep process owners engaged and motivated to continue embedding operational excellence across ITV.”
Ian Cottrell
Director of Broadcast Distribution & Services, ITV
The next step will be to extend the platform to integrate with ITV’s data warehouse for campaign analytics. Create is standardised as the Broadcast Distribution Department’s low-code platform, and there are always further projects in the pipeline.
2 Days
to build fully operational prototype
10 Seconds
alert time for on-air incidents
In-house
put process owners in control
Here’s how you can implement a large-scale drive for operational excellence.
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