TVNZ, New Zealand’s largest free-to-air broadcaster and the nation’s public service broadcaster, operates the TVONE and TV2 television channels, as well as providing an online news service via www.tvnz.co.nz. Recently, TVNZ launched TVNZ Ondemand to provide ondemand television to New Zealanders on their PCs via www.tvnzondemand.co.nz.

To build on the success of its flagship tvnz.co.nz news service, which had been relaunched in  2005, TVNZ decided to launch TVNZ Ondemand to provide viewers with opportunities to watch  some of their favourite television shows on their PCs. The service was a first within New Zealand and to ensure that TVNZ was first to market with this offering, the initial Ondemand solution needed to be implemented within a tight timeframe.

Whilst TVNZ had a clear view of what the target offering would be, and a number of skilled architects, developers, infrastructure engineers and content producers to build a project team, the company didn’t have the resources required for project management, business analysis and testing that was needed.

After reviewing several options, TVNZ decided to ask Gen-i to assist by providing Project Management, a Business Analyst and Testing resources. With Gen-i’s help, TVNZ was able to implement the project five months after project launch, on schedule and under budget.

TVNZ Interactive Production Manager John Ferguson said Gen-i’s project management was pivotal to the project’s success: “The project has had a tight deadline, a complex cast of internal and external stakeholders and a changing political landscape. All of these variables have been handled professionally and successfully.”

The Gen-i testing and business analysis resources worked well with the team at TVNZ, and drove project processes that were as simple as possible. The result was one project team that worked extremely well together, and was focused on delivering a high quality product in as short a timeframe as possible.

With the help of Gen-i, TVNZ was able to implement the project within five months, on schedule and under budget. The site went live in March 2007 and achieved impressive early site traffic, serving more than 330,000 page impressions to over 28,000 unique visitors in one of its first weeks of operation.