McClatchy Interactive (MI) is a division of McClatchy, Inc which is the third largest newspaper company in the United States. MI provides publishing and workflow software products to its affiliate publishers. As an on-site consultant, Effie Zahariades helped the McClatchy Interactive team to improve web process and operations.

Effie was brought into McClatchy Interactive to create and grew a new discipline: online product management. This new discipline was instrumental in managing all media affiliates encompassing over 78 websites in over 30 U.S. markets.

Traditionally, MI had consistently poor client satisfaction, and had consistently fallen short of meeting functionality expectations and project deadlines. Effie quickly instituted benchmarking of client satisfaction and product usage. MI did not have a consistent process for selecting, developing or delivering and assessing the return on investment (ROI) of software products.

Effie worked with management team to develop processes and procedures, based on best practices, for product management and project management. Effie developed marketing-based processes to help MI assess new products including video, social networking, user generated content tools and site search. In all, Effie wanted to make sure that the new processes helped increase affiliate client satisfaction, increase product usage, increase ROI, as well as increase internal team satisfaction and performance.

In addition to the process improvements, Effie significantly influenced the people and environment to break down the walls the existed between departments to create a more effective, team-based product development and delivery program. (www.mcclatchyinteractive.com)

“Effie is a change agent. She can quickly assess needs from both the strategic and front-line perspective, and help drive the organization to a new end goal. She has helped reorganize our efforts to align better ourselves with the customers’ needs and thirst for communication, which paid off with higher satisfaction at the client level.”

Chris Norman, Director of Affiliate Relations, McClatchy Interactive

“Effie is highly-organized and customer focused. She knows how to put processes in place to achieve results for her customers. She is tenacious and willing to go the extra mile to ensure that customers get exactly what they need.”

Gina Falcone-Rupp, VP/Executive Editor, McClatchy Interactive