VIDEO | News Corp Australia CTO: Personalization Feeds Technology

(Oceania) Julian Delany, Chief Technology Officer, News Corp Australia, speaks with Mark Johnson, Fusion Alliance Regional VP and CDO Magazine Editorial Board Member, about the organization’s digital transformation journey, executing change management, and building a personalized content strategy with an emphasis on metadata management.

Delany shares that viewers consuming News Corp’s products digitally indicates the need for digital transformation. The organization has made some structural changes, like having a common unified app and web platform, he states. However, reaping the higher fruit of transformation requires thorough investment and strategic thought.

One of the challenges faced in this context is change management, Delany affirms. Although it has not been incorporated across the business, he says that it has happened in some crucial areas. Delany believes that change management is linked with transformation. He disapproves of any external change manager and stresses the need for business executives to lead the transformation.

Speaking further, Delany points out that planting the seed of possibility is critical. He asserts that stitching together the human and technical elements delivers change. The storytelling aspect of change brings people together to understand and enhance the efficiency of production processes, he adds.

Next, Delany emphasizes personalization as a fundamental insight from consumer research. He ensures that combining both bespoke and off-the-shelf technology brings personalization to life. The automated and manual metadata is utilized through the content application programming interface, which is central to creating personalization, says Delany.

He affirms that personalization is not just the technology, but the content that feeds the technology. Delany stresses the need for a wide variety of content to satisfy 21st-century customers. The strategy requires continuous work, and metadata is essential for the personalization engines to feed off of, he adds.

Finally, Delany states that having a good data source is insufficient if its capacity remains unused. He claims metadata enabled them to organize data correctly.