Michael Cairns, managing partner at Information Media Partners, is a seasoned executive with extensive experience in digital transformation and corporate strategy, particularly in the publishing sector. His firm specializes in consulting for established businesses and private equity owners, focusing on product development and organizational restructuring to enhance operations and market presence. The document outlines a comprehensive approach to digital transformation, emphasizing the importance of customer-centric strategies, agile technology, and cross-functional collaboration.

1. Michael Cairns
Managing Partner
Information Media Partners
Digital Transformation
Senior Management Seminar Session

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Introduction
Michael Cairns is a publishing and media executive with over 25 years experience in
business strategy, operations and technology implementation. As a business
executive, Mr. Cairns has successfully managed several troubled and under-
performing businesses, creating new business opportunities, developing new funding
sources and enhancing shareholder value for investors. His years spent as an
operating executive have largely been with brand-name publishing companies such
as Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, Wolters Kluwer Health, Reed Elsevier and
R.R. Bowker. As a consultant, Mr. Cairns has worked with clients as diverse as
AARP, Hewlett Packard, InterPublic Companies and Reed Elsevier with an emphasis
on business strategy, market development and corporate development.
His skills and experience include:
 Business and corporate strategy development and implementation
 Operations management and business transformation
 Traditional and digital publishing and operations
 Print-to-digital transformation and adoption of new business models
 Software development and software services
Mr. Cairns holds an MBA (Finance) from Georgetown University and a BA from
Boston University. He has served on several boards and advisory groups including
the Association of American Publishers, Book Industry Study Group and the
International ISBN organization. Additionally, he has public and private company
board experience.
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Michael Cairns
Information Media Partners
Strategy Consulting
New York, London, Melbourne
Tel: 908 938 4889
Michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com
Find me:
LinkedIn Twitter Blog Flickr InstaGram

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Information Media Partners
Michael Cairns established Information Media Partners in 2006 as a boutique strategy
consulting firm focused on the information and education publishing segment. The work
conducted by the firm includes product development, corporate development, sales
management and corporate reorganizations. We work with established businesses, private
equity owners and potential acquirers.
Examples of our work include:
 Reorganized and re-focused a $25 million software publishing company by aligning
business operations with client priorities; implementing internal collaboration tools and
project management standards; re-building executive team to focus on effective and
efficient management
 Defined a new business strategy for a large non-profit association and advocacy group,
expanding their business model into global markets to exploit their core knowledge and
expertise across a broader market
 Led an information technology capabilities review at a large international advertising
holding company. Completed over 200 interviews in 15 international offices and multiple
group focus sessions to define the operational ‘gaps’ between existing agency capabilities
and those necessary and important for client delivery by region
 Completed a sales management effectiveness review for a global software company and
defined six key project initiatives to improve sales effectiveness, market development and
account management
We approach our client engagements in a standardized, logical manner which creates the best
environment to identify key business drivers, administrative and logistical road blocks and/or
product or market definition issues. Our investigative approach leads to better insights into
your businesses and supports the development of workable solutions and recommendations
for success.
Visit the Information Media Partners website for more information.
Sample Client List

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Digital transformation is not….
 a choice
 partial or part-time
 casual or non-committal
 incremental
 about legacy systems
 about complacency
 about risk aversion
 without consequences

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Digital transformation is about…
 challenging the status quo
 optimizing the value proposition to the customer
 massive changes in process, technology, people,
products, customer relationships
 experimentation and managing failure
 new partnerships, employees, leadership
 risk and risk-taking
 organizational change and change management
 agility and nimbleness
 cross-functional, multi-disciplinary work practices

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Year 0 Years 1-3 Years 2-4
 Launch digital reinvention
program
 ID opportunities for near-
and long-term cost
reductions
 Set business strategy for
revenue growth and
migration to digital
products/services
 Devise and implement e-
commerce technical
platform
 Re-scale/restructure
technology platform to
accommodate digital
production & delivery
 Set framework for
launch of new e-
products and services
 Adapt existing
products and services
to electronic
distribution platform
 Continually refresh and improve scalable
technical platform
 Develop and maintain a strategic direction
that progressively expands digital
transformation across organization
 Continually explore and confirm expansion
targets -- new markets and new offerings
 Enhance the continuous communication link
between product teams and customers
 Continually update metrics for measurement
of company’s leadership in marketplace
Staging the transformation
Stage:
E-Commerce
Enabled
Digital
Enabled
Recognized
Digital
Leader
Estimated
Timeframe:
Project:
Build New Products
Build Out Core Capabilities
Transformative Products and Services

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Stage:
E-Commerce
Enabled
Strategy, products,
standards and processes
are aligned with the benefits
of electronic distribution.
Recognized
Digital Leader
Market leading provider of digital-based
solutions to core market and capable of
leveraging a state-of-the-art technical
platform for entry into new markets and new
product offerings.
Timeframe:
Core
Capabilities
Focus:
Same customers and markets,
but with improved operations,
ordering, communication and
reporting.
Existing customers and markets,
but with better, more adaptable
and high-margin products more
efficiently delivered.
Existing and new markets, with breakthrough
products, competitive advantage in the form of
editorial development and cost structure, and a
significant driver of innovation throughout the
organization.
A more efficient, customer-
responsive organization.
 Digital marketing
 CRM
 Design, UI/UX expertise
 Mobile strategy
 Data strategy & analytics
 Development &
engineering
 Product management
 Client-focused R&D
 Core capabilities and HR
planning
 Lamplight initiatives
 Mobile apps (and access)
 Payment platform
 Access & entitlement
 Integrated CRM, MDM
 Multiple business models
 2nd Generation KPIs
 Expanded HR planning
 Defined (new) customer journeys
 Multi-channel strategies
 Single view of target customers
 Fully digital value chains: end-to-end provider
 Operational continuous improvement
philosophy
 Sunset ‘legacy’ products
 Brand re-focus, relaunch
 Seamless integration of acquired products
Envisioning digital transformation
Year 0 Years 1-3 Years 2-4
PercentageofRevenuefromDigital
Digital
Enabled

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Guiding digital transformation
 Start with vision and purpose:
“When a unified understanding of customers is lacking, companies
struggle to mobilize employees around integrated touchpoints, journeys,
and consistent experiences, while often failing to discern where to best
place their bets as digital broadens customer choice and the actions
companies can take in response.” (1)
 Focus on your customers/consumers and their behaviors
 Define the right planning horizons to reinvent yourself
frequently
 Understand and invest in competitive differentiation and
advantage
 Harness flexible technology effectively
 Define and establish new motivation and performance plans
 Eliminate operational silos and fiefdoms which impede
change and cooperation
(1) Culture for a digital age, McKinsey Quarterly, July 2017

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Committed executive sponsorship
 CEO/Board sets step-change objectives
 Start with vision and purpose
 Shareholders must have long-term conviction
 Avoids ‘back-sliding’ and ‘good enough’ delivery
 CEO communicates vision – what needs to be achieved, why and
when
 Assign senior management responsibility
 Make other leaders accountable
 Remove blockages
 Motivate staff via bonus, financial and other reward programs
 Encourage inspired leadership where leaders ‘own’ digital change
 Establish reporting frameworks that support constant questioning,
revision and adaptation
 Aligning organization around ‘digital by default’
 Agreement comes from relentless daily engagement
 CEO actively interested in all activities
 Proactive, disruptive, ambitious

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A relentless focus on the customer
 Organize around customer outcomes, not legacy processes
 Think ‘audience’, not ‘product’
 Ask how does this create value for the customer?
 Adopt customers into the product-development process: Co-design
with users
 Use customer feedback to challenge assumptions/mock-ups and
build knowledge of customer needs
 Establish a deep knowledge of needs, requirements, pain points and
objectives
 Obsess over customer engagement and encourage continuous
improvement in product development
 Use marketing actively to engage with consumers, not passively to
persuade
 Include suppliers and partners in open product development
activities
 Engaged customers become advocates for the product(s)

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A philosophy of iterative improvement
 Build out core capabilities – establish base
 Customer, product, marketing data management
 Agile technology, UI/UX expertise
 Data science and analytics
 Select initial (Lighthouse) digital product ideas carefully
with respect to impact, cost, timeframe, need
 Prototype: Make multiple product bets
 Test and experiment
 Test/plan business models which are experimental
 Honor cost of failure and increase speed of learning
 Enabling flexibility creates “pure play” opportunity
 Setting reporting frameworks that review objectives and
results, provide opportunities to double-down or pivot

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Technology to facilitate not impede
 Redefine the role(s) of IT from legacy maintenance to
enterprise and customer enablement
 Replace old, inefficient systems
 Outsource non-core activities to build flexibility
 Seek nimble, flexible and easy-to-use technical solutions
 Agility and resilience
 Technology in terms of value to customers
 Smaller, iterative, focused ‘blocks’ of work
 Enable course correction and effective spending in development
 Amazon technology practice: “Eat your own dog food”
 Open source solutions and “open” by default
 Subscription-based models and virtual/cloud-based solutions
over self-hosted servers and proprietary software
 Limit long-term ‘lock-in’
 Third-party provider contracts which vary based on usage/data

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Technology is increasingly personal
 B2B users are all B2C users: Experiences co-mingled
 Changes behavior of B2B users acting like B2C users
 B2C users are impatient, dilettantes, passionate, social
 UI and UX experience is shaped by B2C media experience
 Invest in researchers and analysts to define customer needs
 Think audience, not product: be channel flexible
 Understand how customers want to consume your content
• “What does the customer do immediately 10 minutes before
and 10 minutes after they use your product?”
 Adapt to the needs of the customer, not to the existing product
range
 Essential to create multi-media: Text, audio, data and
visual assets

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Work across silos and collaborate
 Develop digital thinking across the whole organization
 No digital enclaves
 Establish integrated cross-functional teams
 Not limited to one department – literally applied and embedded everywhere
 Collective wisdom
 Catalog and make best use of the digital expertise you have
 Establish collaborative tools and share knowledge
 Office 365/Google Docs, Cascade, Atlassian, Slack, etc.
 Share data, results, experience
 Stream training sessions, community events and meetings
 Ensure joined-up, comprehensive information systems
 Implement fully-integrated business model(s)
 Not ‘just digital’
 Constraints often cultural, not technical
 Silos enable inadequate information sharing, insufficient accountability
and lack of coordination on enterprise-wide initiatives

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Skills-based investment
 Adopt broad-based internal training programs
 Change hiring practices
 Revise job descriptions
 Distribute decision making
 Avoid top-down management decision making
 Enable cross-functional and cross-business small team-based initiatives
 Provide ‘at point-of-use’ tools & data for decision making
 Think and act like a start-up
 Enable learning culture
 Lunchtime talks on benefits of technology tools
 Encouraging staff to ideate and provide mechanism to contribute
 Establish internal venture fund
 Encourage quick decision making via agile project management
practices
 Acknowledge mistakes, learn from them, rapidly fix them with alternatives
 Agile approach can facilitate a ‘culture of experimentation’

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Reward digital progress
 Communicate benefits across the business
 Show how digital works better and easier
 Drive motivation for digital
 Encourage people to think about how digital creates
improvement
 Open decision making where all staff can participate
 Simple as daily ‘stand-up meetings’
 Tools and information at point of contact to encourage
decision making
 Tough problems can be effectively addressed by
small, focused teams

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Data management
 Product metadata management
 Create product data methodology and center of
excellence
 Customer (CRM) and marketing (MDM)
 Secure data program
 Data to drive product improvement and new product
development
 Performance and users
 Metrics which catalog activity and the impact of
changes and improvements
 Social application interfaces

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Systematically gather and use data
 (Re)define key performance measures
 From basic to sophisticated over time
• Short-term growth milestones
• Specific measures for digital transformation/digital adoption
• Measures for the impact of digital change
 KPIs impose themselves over time helping to navigate and
define road maps
 KPIs represent the coordinates of user behavior
 Data as a strategic asset (2)
 Have a data strategy
 Have a data owner
 Data which is consistent, comprehensive, clear
(2) Corporate Data Strategy & the Chief Data Officer

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Look outward to market & competitors
 Map competition across sectors by digital
achievement and/or capabilities
 Actively engage competition
 Apply experience from different industries
 Create value through platforms and networks
 Understand and invest in differentiation and
advantage
 “Best in breed” benchmarking
 Build global awareness
 Seek partners to build virtual scale

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“Lighthouse” projects
 New initiatives need to be chosen carefully
 Markets where customers are passionate
 Markets where decisions are expensive
 Investments linked to clear achievable targets
 Rank success, opportunity, benefit, timeframe, costs
 Initial projects offer significant rewards with manageable
risk
 Targets help prioritize benefits of initiatives
 Targets make things clear and can drive transformative
change
 External benchmarking can support target definition
 Setting ‘step-change’ targets early on guards against
‘good enough’ and regression

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Establish high-caliber launch teams
 Product launch team(s) under senior executive
(CEO, CDO, CRO)
 Hire and/or train designers, data scientists, scrum
masters, developers
 Expect to hire 10-50 new people for initial products
 Explore “Acquhire” opportunites with M/A activity
 Aggressive on price and justify with added features,
content, functionality, etc.
 Launch teams hand over products to ‘core’ product
groups over time

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Please visit my blog for related articles
and presentations:
http://personanondata.blogspot.com/2011
/09/corporate-data-strategy-and-chief-
data.html
Michael Cairns
Managing Partner
Michael.Cairns@InfoMediaPartners.com
908 938 4889
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