The CBC owns a corporate domain portfolio of several hundred domain names. The CBC held their domains with a large corporate registrar and was not satisfied with the service and value they were receiving. In addition, they utilized several DNS services both on legacy internal DNS systems and third party Managed DNS services.
Business Challenges
In 2015, CBC began an exercise to explore alternate corporate domain registrar and DNS service providers. They were driven by a need to reduce cost and improve control over and visibility into their domain portfolio performance. Over the years, their domain portfolio had become bloated, adding unnecessary cost to the organization. IT, digital and administrative teams were challenged to gain a full view of their portfolio and DNS infrastructure. Internal domain ownership was not clearly identified which caused continued bloating as more domains were registered and few allowed to expire. On the DNS side, the CBC utilized a variety of DNS services both in house and through third party providers largely due to legacy service set ups. for which a reasonable alternative to consolidate had not been identified. The result of various DNS services and dissatisfaction with the incumbent domain registrar, IT and administrative teams were spending too many cycles managing assets without a clear view of the entire portfolio. It was expensive and not easy to manage, requiring excessive internal cycles to maintain digital operations. The corporation sought to put in place change management approval workflow, ability to allocate costs to associated operating entities and departments. They also sought greater data visibility to teams required for them to better manage the performance of their digital footprint.
Solution and Outcomes
CBC digital operations and IT leadership decided to source an enterprise-class service provider to consolidate their domain portfolio and DNS infrastructure onto a single, integrated digital asset management platform. A new platform needed to meet the needs of internal digital marketing, brand management, systems administration and IT stakeholders. CBC selected Authentic Web Inc. who undertook a full service project to consolidate domain names and to reduce the number of DNS services in production. Authentic Web delivered the following:
- Enterprise domain registrar and DNS consolidation to improve operating efficiency;
- Easy-to-use domain technology control hub tools, designed specifically for enterprise IT, administrative and digital teams;
- Working with CBC project team to reduce the cost related to the total number of domains under management;
- Efficient operation to reduce the growing total cost of ownership related to human resource cycles;
- Business intelligence for digital and IT teams to easily access information to make good decisions and tools to execute;
- Custom needs identification and zone file function development such as “wildcard” redirects among others; and
- Improve control and security with automated, digital asset change management workflow and financial allocation reporting.
IN SUMMARY, CBC has greatly improved internal process controls, reporting and significantly reduced internal human resource and external vendor costs. It has gained workflow control, visibility and tools to improve business efficiency. Assets are secured under one platform and teams are empowered with easy-to-use enterprise tools they need to efficiently manage the corporation’s digital footprint.
Client Perspective
“Authentic Web provides CBC/Radio-Canada with an intuitive, cost effective, business focused domain management platform that enables efficient management of our web domain portfolio from registration to DNS mapping through cost attribution and everything in between.
Their deep industry experience and insights about the emerging issues clearly informs their platform roadmap and related services.”
Soo Kim, Senior Director, Digital Operations, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation