Unified and NashTech: driving digital media excellence

Industry

Technology

Introduction

Thanks to the partnership with NashTech, Unified has overcome multiple technology challenges since the conceptualisation of the partnership.

About Unified

Unified is a wholly owned subsidiary of iHeartMedia, the #1 audio company in the United States. Unified focuses on providing digital advertising services and solutions powered by data and technology. In short, it’s about reach, scale and consolidation of media buying and reporting that Unified aims to bring to their customers.

The challenge

The highly competitive tech talent market in the US has resulted in scalability and resource management challenges for Unified. Having to compete with tech giants in the market to attract the top talent has fuelled Unified with the decision to engage with a technology partner who can help them solve the scalability math while still ensuring development quality.

The approach and solution

NashTech has a team based in the US who works closely with Unified to gain domain knowledge, understand the tech stack, facilitate the project and bridge the gap between the in-house team and the Vietnam-based development teams. Furthermore, working closely together during the early days of the engagement has helped the teams overcome any barriers in cultural or language differences.

“We really like how we have people here in the US as it helps us with team management and scalability. I think that is a huge advantage that we have over other partners that we tested out in the past. Also, as we like to treat the offshore team as our own employees as much as possible, the NashTech team that we have here in the US has helped us bridge these gaps, which is really great.”

Matt Pilcer, CTO of Unified

Moreover, by having our team in the US, NashTech is also able to get to know our client more thoroughly, leading to smoother collaboration that facilitates achievement towards mutual goals.

“We could really embed someone in our business so
they can understand not just our tech stack but also our values, goals, mission and vision. And then the NashTech team in the US will be able to help us communicate that to the development team so that they understand it’s not just KPIs to hit, but there is an overall business reason why they’re working on it, and I think it just helped build accountability, ownership, and overall team culture.”

Matt Pilcer, CTO of Unified.

Matt then added:

“It’s not just a contract that NashTech’s US team cares about. But they care about our success too, which I think is a long-term view, and I really appreciate it.”

Matt Pilcer, CTO of Unified.

The outcome

Leveraging a partner like NashTech has enabled Unified to scale up the team and fill the talent gap while being respectful to budgets. The relationship with NashTech has enabled Unified to grow quickly during their startup phase and pivot to navigate those challenges better as they can easily manage the team, scale up or down and allocate resources based on their needs.

“Working with NashTech does take a huge burden off our shoulder in finding talent as the working process is very simple for us to scale up the team when needed..”

Matt Pilcer, CTO of Unified.

With the new tools and systems that Unified and NashTech have been working on together, it allows campaign managers to run media at scale, while providing customers with analytics on how their ad buys are performing. Through the tools, analytics are not just simple digital figures and numbers but Unified is also able to provide broadcast analytics to their customers.

Additionally, as iHeartMedia is a large company with a longstanding history, the company also faced challenges with tech debts and silos inside the organisation. The relationship with NashTech has enabled Unified to navigate these complexities and contribute to the growth of their parent company.

“We found that our approach to offshoring resources was considerably mature, and it is something that we believe can be implemented elsewhere in the business. So, the relationship with NashTech is something that we feel very comfortable demonstrating and bringing to the table to help those businesses within the parent company scale.”

Matt Pilcer, CTO at Unified.

The partnership with NashTech also helped Unified to better manage their internal resources as they can shift focus and efforts to more strategic initiatives while handing the technology burden over to NashTech.

“We are maintaining mission critical data pipelines that require a lot of care, otherwise, it is going to fall apart right away. But such tasks, while they are absolutely mission critical, they are not the most interesting part of the job from a technical perspective and it’s a real burden. And that’s the biggest benefit of working with NashTech as the team has taken ownership towards data pipelines maintenance and released the burden off our shoulders.

That also enables our product managers to kind of think less about how to develop solutions to manage those data pipelines and focus more on talking to end users about what their business problems and challenges are, and how those data sets could help solve them. It enables our people to work on more strategic and innovative initiatives and that has been a real advantage for us because when the next big thing arises, we can go for it with full focus”

Matt Pilcer, CTO at Unified

The longevity of the partnership

Matt shared the most significant factor that has led to the longevity of the partnership with NashTech:

“I think if I had to point to one thing, it is that we have the NashTech team who we treat like employees and I believe, they also feel like they’re a part of Unified. The team takes ownership of our stack, has a vested interest in our success and genuinely cares about the work, I think that’s the number one thing”

Matt Pilcer, CTO at Unified.

Communication and transparency are two other factors that Matt emphasised as being important to maintain a positive working relationship between the two companies.

“Any barriers or challenges arise, we overcome that with communication and transparency. I don’t feel like there is anything being hidden from us. It’s always very direct and I really appreciate that”

Matt Pilcer, CTO at Unified.

Matt also shared the benefit of having a longstanding partnership with NashTech:

“Because of the long-term relationship, the people on the project from NashTech’s side really understand the types of people that we like to work with, the technical skills that we look for or the type of resources that will work well on our project. As a result, when there is a need to scale up the team, it will be carried out smoothly. It has optimised the end-to-end process for our business and created a smooth interaction.”

Matt Pilcer, CTO at Unified

The partnership between Unified and NashTech has proven to be a resounding success, enabling Unified to scale its technical capabilities while maintaining high quality and controlling costs.

The NashTech team in the US has been invaluable in bridging cultural gaps, facilitating smooth communication and ensuring NashTech offshore developers have a deep understanding of Unified’s business goals and values. This tight integration has allowed the Unified internal team to focus on strategic initiatives while NashTech handles mission-critical but tedious data pipelines.

With transparency, strong communication and a shared commitment to mutual success, this long-standing partnership looks poised to continue driving innovation and digital media excellence for years to come.