The Client The Challenge The Solution

Newsweek Magazine has been a nation-leading newsmagazine for most of the past century. Newsweek has been widely recognized as one of the leading journalistic organizations in the world, and is a broad source for news for millions of readers worldwide. As a member of the Washington Post Company, Newsweek operates alongside such other organizations as Slate.com, Budget Travel, and Kaplan Learning Center. Newsweek's brand and distinctive logo is recognized around the world, and its weekly publication has grown to become a cultural touchstone. Today, Newsweek has expanded its operations online, with the highly-successful Newsweek.com and other related websites.

BTG's work with Newsweek began with a series of conversations between firm partners and Newsweek senior management. The challenge posed to the BTG team from Newsweek was simple: "How can your firm help us use technology to its fullest potential for our organization?" What would follow would be a long-term relationship between BTG and this nation-leading news organization, with our firm conceiving, planning, and implementing a dramatic new business opportunity for Newsweek, based around the latest in web technology. NOTE: Due to the sensitive and proprietary nature of our work with Newsweek, and the ongoing business interests of both the client and our firm, much of the exact specificity of this project will not be covered. Instead, this case study covers the overall process of the consultancy.

BTG's involvement progressed through all stages of project development, from conceptual brainstorming to product launch, and subsequent management, including:

1. Strategic Conceptualization and Brainstorming – Vested with the client's mandate to create a technology solution to benefit their organization—and nothing else--BTG formulated a full strategic vision for a new online business venture on the client's behalf.
2. Project Planning and Proposal Development – Having created a fundamental vision and objective for the project, BTG worked closely with Newsweek to create a full venture proposal, as well as plan development timelines and deployment strategy.
3. Total Enterprise Platform and Application Development – BTG's development team continued the crucial work of our planning team by creating a top-of-the-line web platform and application-based site to serve as the core asset of Newsweek's new business venture.
4. Ongoing Technology Management and Support – Following the successful development of a business model and technology platform, BTG was closely integrated with Newsweek's internal staffing teams to continue our work as the driving technology arm of the client's new business venture.

Strategic Conceptualization and Brainstorming
What began as several high-level, hypothetical discussions between Newsweek senior management and BTG leadership quickly evolved into an exercise in conceptual formation and enterprise brainstorming. As Newsweek's managers were already occupied with the day-to-day needs of their international organization, it fell to BTG to manage all aspects of this planning stage, in order to devise a cohesive project model and purpose. The BTG team is brought together by a shared commitment to creativity and innovation. We collectively believe in the potential of technology to create dramatic new opportunities when applied in unique and ground-breaking ways. Using the shared experience and expertise of our diverse team, BTG applied critical thinking to the question posed to us by the client.

By assessing Newsweek's core business competencies and strengths, along with our knowledge of the technology landscape, BTG was able to formulate a cohesive enterprise idea that could be effectively implemented by our team and capitalized on by the client.

Project Planning and Proposal Development
Following the successful creation of a project concept and its provisional acceptance by the client, BTG set about creating a fully-formed project plan and proposal, including technical specifications, various timelines, budgeting information, and contingency arrangements. This project plan would govern and guide the entire initiative once it was operational. It was crucial that BTG effectively translate our initial concept into a comprehensive plan, as the future success and viability of getting the venture off the ground depended on it. The BTG team is united in sharing an underlying belief in organization, practicality, and common sense. While we are a group of visionaries, our visions are guided by business logic, practical experience, and the actual parameters of the challenges and solutions at hand. Internet and software technologies offer an almost limitless potential to create new tools, services, and applications. However, the real-world limitations, restrictions, and guidelines of any project are all too often avoided because they present discouraging realities and less flexible challenges to those that face them. At BTG, we believe that these real-world parameters should be embraced and fully investigated to create full solutions that carry not only abstract technological benefits, but practical and immediate results for our clients.

BTG provided Newsweek with a detailed project plan that incorporated into its projections many different factors and dependencies, as well as forecasting for the volatility and changing nature of these elements once development had started. Though the prospect of additional client work rested with a positive finding during our feasibility study, BTG approached the task at hand seeking only to provide the client with solid, accurate information in helping them to make an informed decision. In providing consulting services to our clients, our goal as a firm is always to present unbiased and straightforward answers to the difficult and complex technology questions faced by businesses today.

Total Enterprise Platform and Application Development
After presenting our full proposal to Newsweek Management in New York, and gaining unanimous support and approval for our plan, BTG began development full force of the technology platform and web application that would be at the core of Newsweek's new business venture. BTG's project managers delegated different areas of development and functionality to teams of our programmers and designers. Our managers divided staff into smaller programming squads, where several programmers worked in close contact on broad areas of project development. Larger areas of integration were tackled by forming interoperating squads, composed of separate members of each original team, to collaboratively work on tying everything together. Our developers utilized the latest in web technologies to quickly and robustly build a full-blown web application, with high modularity to allow for easy expansion and later development down the road. Working in close-knit programming squads, BTG's team created a flexible and adaptable web platform that could easily be integrated into other systems, or connected with platforms and APIs throughout the Internet for seamless interconnectivity.

Following the completion of a solid core component build, BTG's work was reviewed by Washington Post Newsweek Interactive (WPNI), a division of the Washington Post Company responsible for managing and overseeing all interactive technology. The code review findings were unanimous—BTG was lauded and congratulated on its elegant and innovative coding methods in creating a world-class web application within record time.

Ongoing Technology Management and Support
BTG's work did not end with the creation of the foundational web application that would drive Newsweek's new online business venture. Once Newsweek has assembled an internal team to manage editorial aspects of the new website, they returned to BTG to take advantage of our full-service technology management and support. Newsweek would retain BTG personnel to both manage and provide ongoing development for its burgeoning new website. BTG's development team continues to work closely with Newsweek, providing on-call support and oversight of all technology operations for the new website. BTG's management works with Newsweek to refine and extend the strategic vision first proposed by BTG during the conceptual planning phases of the new venture.

BTG is proud to have been a part of this new venture, following and guiding a project from conception through to launch and beyond. We enjoy a close working relationship with Newsweek and continue to provide general consulting services to their senior management on select technology projects. When world-leading newsmagazine Newsweek was seeking a technology consulting firm to match their high-caliber of excellence and performance, their choice was easy—their choice was BTG.