Lightbend > Case Studies > UK Broadcaster Leverages Scala and Play for Innovative Business Intelligence Solution

UK Broadcaster Leverages Scala and Play for Innovative Business Intelligence Solution

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

Europe

Country

United Kingdom

Product

Typesafe Platform
Play Framework
Scala
Akka

Tech Stack

Scala
Java
Play Framework
Akka

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Digital Expertise
Productivity Improvements
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Application Development Platforms
Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management

Applicable Industries

Software
Telecommunications

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Product Research & Development

Use Cases

Remote Collaboration

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Valtech’s client is a prominent UK broadcaster that is constantly seeking innovative ways to deliver content to a global digital audience. The broadcaster is committed to maintaining a competitive edge by leveraging the wealth of usage data available to them. This data is crucial for providing insights into product improvements and enhancing the overall user experience. The broadcaster's vision was to make daily insights available to around 2000 stakeholders across the business, ensuring that the information was presented in an easy-to-consume, stylish format accessible on any device. With a strong focus on innovation and efficiency, the broadcaster sought a partner who could help them achieve their goals within tight deadlines and a fixed budget. Valtech, a global digital media agency known for its creative and engineering expertise, was selected to turn the broadcaster's vision into reality. Valtech's ability to operate across all stages of the project lifecycle, from strategy and consulting to user experience, delivery, maintenance, and optimization, made them an ideal partner for this ambitious project.

The Challenge

Valtech’s client, a UK broadcaster, faced the challenge of delivering daily insights to approximately 2000 stakeholders across the business. The broadcaster aimed to transform their monthly in-depth reports into a more frequent, easily consumable format that could be accessed on any device. The challenge was compounded by tight deadlines, aggressive targets, and a fixed budget, necessitating a solution that was both efficient and scalable. The broadcaster required a platform that could handle extensive data manipulation, including sorting, grouping, mapping, and combining data from a NoSQL data store and existing REST APIs. The solution also needed to generate bespoke SVG visualizations on the server, which would be presented through a responsively designed website and email channels. The broadcaster turned to Valtech to bring this vision to life, seeking a technology platform that could meet these complex requirements while ensuring ease of use and maintainability.

The Solution

Valtech selected the Typesafe Platform, which includes Scala and the Play Framework, as the foundation for the broadcaster's Business Intelligence solution. Scala was chosen for its powerful support for data manipulation operations, such as sorting, grouping, mapping, and combining, which were essential for generating bespoke SVG visualizations. Scala's interoperability with Java allowed the use of Apache Batik for transcoding SVG visualizations into JPEG images for clients that did not support SVG. The Play Framework was selected for its ease of installation, separation of concerns, and powerful HTML template language, which facilitated the generation of both web pages and email content. Play's asynchronous actions and Scala's futures enabled parallel database and network operations, ensuring scalability to 2000 users without blocking web servicing threads. Valtech's project teams integrated UX and UI experts with server-side developers, leveraging Play's features to enhance both front-end and back-end development. The solution was delivered in just 12 weeks, with the first release now in use and the customer expressing high satisfaction with the results. Valtech's use of the Typesafe Platform has since become a part of their solution toolkit, demonstrating the platform's effectiveness in creating scalable, maintainable, and high-quality solutions.

Operational Impact

The solution was delivered in just 12 weeks, demonstrating Valtech's ability to meet tight deadlines and aggressive targets.
The broadcaster's vision of providing daily insights to 2000 stakeholders was successfully realized, enhancing the accessibility and usability of the data.
Valtech's integration of UX and UI experts with server-side developers ensured a seamless development process, resulting in a high-quality, maintainable solution.
The use of the Typesafe Platform, including Scala and Play, provided a scalable and efficient solution that met the broadcaster's complex requirements.
The broadcaster expressed high satisfaction with the results, indicating the success of the project in meeting their business intelligence needs.

Quantitative Benefit