G Adventures owns a corporate domain portfolio of several hundred domain names with expectations to increase the portfolio over time. G Adventures like many growing enterprises accumulated domains using retail registrars acquired over the years by IT, digital marketing, business leadership who registered without defined enterprise policies and procedures and as a result of M&A activity.
Business Challenges
In 2016, as a large and growing organization, the IT team struggled to get control over their domain and DNS infrastructure. While retail registrars were a good fit in the early years as a low cost vehicle to accumulate domain names, managing an accumulated portfolio of business critical digital assets at over ten retail registrars created control, visibility, management efficiency and cost problems. In addition, the company utilized many Managed DNS services mostly due to defaults at retail registrars. The company had already selected an enterprise level Managed DNS provider for flagship properties but it had not yet transitioned over 90% of the domain portfolio, due to IT human resource priorities and related time constraints. With multiple domain registrars and DNS providers, IT cycles were increasingly being spent managing multiple systems. Retail registrar email noise, irrelevant for enterprise needs created efficiency issues as each email needed review to ensure no domains were lost. All of this was not only an IT headache but an inefficient use of expensive IT human resource time as well as a security and change management blind spot that needed to be addressed. Lastly, the company had no effective way to enforce domain processes from ordering new, managing existing or tracking domains. Change management approval workflow depended upon individuals as opposed to systems. IT leadership recognized this was unsustainable, particularly as the rapid expansion of generic top-level domains (gTLDs) was about to add complexity and as the company’s growth required new enterprise controls for efficient scaling.
Solution and Outcomes
G Adventures IT leadership decided to source an enterprise-class service provider to consolidate their domain portfolio and DNS infrastructure on a single, integrated digital asset management platform that would meet the needs of internal digital marketing, brand management and IT stakeholders. G Adventures selected Authentic Web Inc. who undertook a full service project to consolidate domain names and DNS services to a single platform. Authentic Web delivered the following:
- Enterprise domain registrar and DNS consolidation for greater operating efficiency;
- Modern, easy-to-use technology control hub tools, designed specifically for enterprise IT and digital teams;
- Efficient operation to reduce growing total cost of ownership related to human resource cycles;
- Business intelligence for digital and IT teams to easily access information;
- Project management to complete domain and DNS consolidations and provide on-demand advisory and support services; and
- Improve control, security and policies with automated, digital asset change management workflow.
IN SUMMARY, G Adventures has greatly improved the internal process controls and reduce internal human resource costs. It has gained workflow control, visibility and tools to improve business efficiency. Assets are secured under one platform and teams are empowered with the enterprise tools they need to efficiently manage the company’s digital footprint.
Client Perspective
“Faced with managing several hundred domains and multiple registrars around the globe it became apparent that consolidation of domains and DNS under one registrar was the way to go. After reviewing several domain management services Authentic Web stood out from the crowd not only because it addressed our global, technical and financial requirements, they brought a service first approach that has quickly developed into a trusted partnership.
Authentic Web solved our technical challenges, eased our IT overhead and reduced complexity around managing and purchasing domains bringing order to our domain portfolio freeing us to move forward and focus on domain strategy.”
David Stewart, Director Information Technology