Leader Spotlight: Building a comprehensive migration plan, with Deepika Manglani

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Deepika Manglani is VP of Product and Program Management at Los Angeles Times (LA Times). Born and raised in India, she started her career as a business analyst at Argusoft and moved to the United States to work as an IT consultant. From there, Deepika started at Tribune Company and transitioned to Tribune Publishing Company, (TribPub) as part of a corporate divestiture.

She led the advertising systems setup for more than 10 TribPub newspapers across the country along with mergers and acquisitions. In 2018, Deepika joined LA Times when TribPub decided to divest it. She now heads up the product and program management office at LA Times where has built the department from scratch.

In our conversation, Deepika talks about her experience leading large-scale migration and digital transformation efforts at the Los Angeles Times, including multiple acquisitions, a divestiture, and a 363-application migration plan. She discusses the challenges that came along with such a migration feat, such as building a new technology organization from the ground up and identifying legacy applications, dependencies, and the necessary applications to support the newly acquired businesses. Deepika also shares her initiatives to revamp LA Times’ subscriber center and self-service advertising platforms.

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A decade-long advertising innovation

In your current role at LA Times, you’re responsible for all IT products and programs within LA Times and you also support other Nant entities. Can you say more about any of those programs and initiatives?

In my current position, I handle a considerable amount of responsibilities on the LA Times side, which has been a very challenging journey — demanding exceptional organizational skills, effective time management, and the ability to multitask. However, I thoroughly enjoy working here. I am supported by an incredible team and I am a firm believer that a leader’s success is directly tied to the quality and dedication of their team.

I provide advisory support to Nant on certain projects that the LA Times may be considering pursuing or may have implemented in the past. Sometimes we benefit from signing joint contracts, so I’m also involved in negotiating and evaluating vendor solutions, system integration (SI) partners, and so on. It’s been very challenging and requires a lot of organizational efficiency, time management, and multitasking. But I love what I do. I have an incredible team and I firmly believe that a leader is only as successful and as good as their team.

Speaking of initiatives at LA Times, recently, we launched the redesigned advertising self-service ecommerce site for our advertisers — both B2B and B2C. This was the first product that I worked on when I started with Tribune Company 12 years ago as a business analyst. At the time, I conducted market research to see what other publications were doing in our space, and to my surprise, I didn’t find anybody with an end-to-end self-service where people could place an ad without having to call customer service. Building that out initially put us on the map.

Fast forward almost a decade later, during the recent redesign, I looked to see what other publications are doing now. Astonishingly, there isn’t a comprehensive end-to-end solution for ad categories in the country. I’m thrilled to be part of this redesign site that’s going to enhance our user experience and be the only one that has this end-to-end solution.

This redesign brought our bounce rate in line with the industry standard for any ecommerce site. The range is 20–45 percent, and we were on the high end before this redesign. Now, we’re right in line, which paves a path forward for the increased conversion rate we’re hoping for.

You also recently transitioned your email marketing operations. Could you talk about that project as well?

Yes, we switched to Marigold’s Sailthru. The platform’s comparatively exceptional capabilities and our incredible project team made the transformation smooth. This helped us decommission some of our redundant apps and increase our operational efficiency into this one unified platform. Looking forward, we are going to implement Liveclicker, a tool that will revolutionize our engagement strategy. It’s going to give us dynamic, personalized content for our subscribers and enhance our ability to engage with our audience more meaningfully.

For the self-service ad initiative, you mentioned being the first comprehensive end-to-end solution for this process. What made you realize that this could be a key differentiator?

In today’s fast-paced world, efficiency is key. With the prevalence of AI-powered chatbots and FAQs, customers expect quick solutions without the hassle of lengthy phone calls. Recognizing this trend, we prioritized the development of a user-friendly, self-service platform. In an industry where time is of the essence, advertisers won’t hesitate to seek other alternatives like working with advertising agencies that either place ads with us or other publications. This way, we ensured customer satisfaction and maintained a strong competitive edge in the market.

Also, this was a great way to improve the efficiency of our customer service team and reduce staffing needs. Previously, we operated eight to 10 different advertising systems across 10 publications at Tribune Company, which incurred significant expenses in hosting fees and support. Managing and supporting these systems involved considerable efforts, particularly when implementing a new feature of introducing new pricing modifications or new ad sizes. Consolidating these systems into a unified solution across our advertising business greatly simplified the operations and lowered our OpEx.

Migrating 363 applications

In 2018, the LA Times went through a divestiture from Tribune Publishing. What did this mean for you and the team at the time?

Reflecting on the past, it’s astonishing to think about all the challenges we faced and navigated through. LA Times and San Diego Union-Tribune were acquired together in June of 2018 by Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong. This included all the assets associated with these two brands, including the newspaper websites, the community papers, etc. However, this transduction did not include employees who were tied to the shared services utilized by Tribute across all properties, such as legal, finance, HR, and IT. Consequently, my peers and I embarked on the task of establishing a new technology organization from scratch.

The CIO, my current boss, was the first one to be hired and I joined shortly after to help build the IT department, set up a new infrastructure, and migrate more than 360 applications. Our initial focus was to prioritize the revenue-generating applications needed to support the two brands that were bought. That required meticulous planning and we embraced a cloud-first strategy. We migrated the majority of the workloads onto VMware on AWS, leaving only a few legacy applications on-premise for latency and performance reasons.

Then, we had to identify the team of resources needed to do the overall migration, create a master transition plan, identify all the dependencies, and develop a comprehensive budget.

Were there processes that you implemented that helped with the success of this migration?

We segmented this transition into nine distinct programs, facilitating parallel tracking. We established the environment for application and digital migrations, encompassing both the mobile app and website for LA Times and San Diego Union-Tribute. Subsequently, we undertook the data migration, which involved transferring years’ worth of critical analytics and reporting data. Additionally, we opted to transition from the solutions previously used by Tribune leading to various implementations for CRM, CMS, ERP, and other systems.

Initially, the instinct to expedite the process often leads to a “lift and shift” approach, preserving existing systems with plans for future optimization. While we employed that strategy in some cases, our journey was pushed by significant transformations driven by pragmatic solutions. We began with 363 applications essential for business operations and retired 63 with 300 left to migrate.

Several factors contributed to our success including, first among them a thorough understanding of the transition service agreement (TSA). Given the penalties associated with missed migration deadlines, grasping the nuances of the contract, prioritizing revenue-generating applications, mapping out app dependencies, ensuring business continuity of operations, and managing stakeholder expectations were some of the key ones.

All of this formed the foundation of a comprehensive plan that outlined all the tasks, key milestones, dependencies, team members, and any potential risks. We then measured the progress of migration against predefined KPIs and made adjustments as needed.

Creating a detailed migration plan

As you went through this, you were reporting to executives, hiring new folks, and helping align departments. How did you approach stakeholder management throughout this process?

I had steering committees set up either biweekly or monthly with stakeholders to review project statuses. I’d been in a business relationship management role for quite some time prior, and that was part of my job before this transition. I believe developing a strong partnership between IT and the rest of the business, as well as creating a relationship of trust, is very important. It goes a long way when the business is involved from the very beginning of the migration or project and it helps with the adoption of new platforms.

You were asked to complete this in two years, and did it in 18 months — that’s an impressive timeline. Do you have any advice for someone working on a similar initiative?

If I were to offer advice to someone tackling a similar initiative, I would emphasize the importance of patience amidst the flood of information and inventory that they will have to go through. Taking the time to fully grasp these details is crucial. Drafting a solid plan that is effectively communicated is essential. Once you have compiled an inventory of what needs to migrate and when, outlining execution becomes more manageable. Proceed methodically addressing each task, dependency, and resource requirement outlined in the plan. Create a budget, track all expenses against it, and watch it like a hawk.

Given the complexity of this type of migration, there will be several challenges. Maintain focus on the bigger picture and the overall budget. Additionally allocating ample time in the plan for end-user training and support is paramount. Even if you face issues or challenges during or post-migration, well-prepared end users who feel supported are more understanding and accommodating. They recognize the efforts being made to address the issues and are more likely to remain patient and cooperative throughout the process.

When a newspaper company goes remote

After the migration was complete, companies went remote in 2020. How did that impact the work you’d done and what was next for your team?

Post-migration, right when we thought we could breathe, we got hit with the pandemic. First off, we had excessive VPN traffic within the company, so the system needed to be scaled to support 100 percent of users working remotely. We had to upgrade and reengineer the VPN solution and scale up our virtual desktop environment for all of our contingent workers, vendors, partners, etc. using Amazon WorkSpaces because they didn’t have company laptops. Our footprint on WorkSpaces increased, so we had to determine how to allocate dedicated workspaces versus shared workspaces.

Secondly, our sales team encountered difficulties connecting with advertisers due to remote work constraints and not having access to their desk phones. Without access to their office desk phones, which displayed the LA Times number on caller ID, they had to resort to using their cell phones for outreach. To address that, we quickly spun up a softphone solution that enabled remote calls via Microsoft Teams, the desktop softphone, while retaining the original LA Times phone number.

The last thing was setting up home offices. We facilitated this by allowing individuals to visit the office and collect necessary equipment. Additionally, we shipped numerous monitors, docking stations, accessories, and peripheral devices to remote workers. To ensure proper inventory management, we introduced a property pass form to track the distribution of these items.

Transforming the digital subscriber experience

Like many newspapers, LA Times is a subscription-based platform. How do you make sure the experience of subscribing and unsubscribing is as smooth as possible for users?

In 2020, we revamped our subscriber center and self-service products. We switched to a SaaS solution for our subscriber billing, which also warranted a change to our subscriber self-service. This initiative resulted in the decommissioning of a couple of applications and consolidated the remaining ones into one unified solution now in use. It required us to build a frontend, which is the current subscriber self-service site that you see on the LA Times website. Since then, we have dedicated considerable time and effort to enhancing the user experience, focusing on minimizing the number of steps required to sign up for new subscriptions and streamlining the process.

Our teams meticulously analyzed the subscriber experience, delving into reasons for cancellations, email open rate, click-to-open rate, and more. Through rigorous A/B testing and continuous website and mobile app improvements, we have refined the user experience for our subscribers. Currently, most of our subscriber feedback comes from our customer service team through the call center or chat.

Finally, AI has opened the door for a lot of opportunities around personalization, content, and media in general. What are you excited about regarding AI in your industry and work?

The one that stands out to me the most is the anticipation around ChatGPT 4.0. AI has become ubiquitous in our daily lives — it’s penetrating homes, businesses, and global markets, and we’re definitely in a transformative era. Worldwide, 50 percent of people are incorporating AI into their daily lives, even without realizing it. That number is only expected to go up. However, amidst the excitement, a crucial conversation revolves around responsible AI. Most AI tools display a warning that emphasizes its potential for errors and urges users to verify important information.

As far as our AI initiatives go, we have some exciting innovation projects that are brewing, such as the digitization of our editorial archives. We’ve been printing since December of 1881, so we have almost 150 years of data in our editorial archives. This will be a significant contribution to research, education, and several other sections.

We are looking into segmenting and structurally storing vast datasets while integrating metadata tags. The objective is to train a large language model, which can then be used to develop new products from these archives. These are products that we can build for other businesses, customers, or our own staff. It will save them time to do that historical research or draw a timeline of events.

We are also looking at partnering with AI to generate alternative headlines, story summaries, categories, keywords, etc. I’ll say it again: responsible AI is key. My peers here at LA Times always recognize that AI is only here to augment and improve human work and not replace the creativity, strategy, and emotional intelligence that humans can bring to any product.