Digital Television Group

When the system becomes the problem

The Digital Television Group (DTG) is the UK’s independent research and technology organisation for the digital TV industry. Founded in 1995, it brings together broadcasters, manufacturers, and platform operators to set the technical standards that make UK television work. Its members include some of the biggest names in the industry, and its working groups drive everything from HDMI standards to television over IP.

The DTG’s WordPress website had been in place for several years, but the relationship with the agency managing it had broken down. The site couldn’t do what the organisation needed it to do. Member sign-ups were a manual process. Documents and groups were managed by hand. An ageing email system for communicating with members had become unwieldy, and the ambition to move everything onto Microsoft Teams was technically beyond what the existing platform could support.

Will Parsons, Marketing Director at the DTG, recognised that patching the old system was no longer an option. The site needed rebuilding from the ground up.

What We Did

• Full WordPress website rebuild for a membership organisation
• Custom Microsoft Teams integration enabling external users to join Teams groups via API
• HubSpot integration with automated member tracking and activity logging
• Membership management system with permissions, document access, and group assignment Proof of concept prototyping across Teams, HubSpot, and membership workflows
• Streamlined one-click sign-up process replacing multiple manual administrative steps

Building something that shouldn’t exist

Before any design or development started, Vu ran an extended prototyping phase. The membership system, the HubSpot integration, and the Teams connection all had to be proven before the full build was committed to.

This was a project where getting the plumbing right mattered more than anything else.

“The project process was much more heavily weighted towards prototyping and research, ensuring the various integrations would work the way they wanted. It gave us the opportunity to test what’s possible beyond what’s documented,” explains Vu Technical Director Richard.

The standout technical challenge was the Microsoft Teams integration. In theory, it should be impossible to join a Teams group via API if you’re not already a member of that organisation’s tenant.

It’s not something Vu could find an example of anyone having done before and AI tools suggested it couldn’t be done. But through the prototyping phase, the team found a way to smooth the entire process into a single flow.

A user signs up, receives one email from Microsoft, clicks through, and everything else joins automatically. No multiple sign-up screens. No manual intervention.

The HubSpot integration was equally tightly coupled. Every new member is checked against HubSpot on sign-up. Every significant action on the site, joining a group, downloading a document, attending a meeting, is logged back automatically.

The DTG now has a live picture of member engagement without anyone having to maintain it.

Once the technical foundations were proven, the project moved into a more conventional website build. But the front end was always underpinned by that foundational work, ensuring that what looked simple to the user was technically robust underneath.

One click and you’re in

A membership platform that replaces manual administration with automated sign-up, Microsoft Teams integration, and real-time HubSpot tracking, giving the DTG the tools to focus on what they actually do.

The biggest change for the DTG has been operational. What used to require manual addition to email groups, document libraries, and meeting lists now happens in a single automated flow. Group chairs can give their members clear information about what to do without having to police the system. The administrative burden that had built up over years has been quietly removed.

The best evidence that it works is the silence. Will Parsons and the DTG team are getting on with their jobs rather than troubleshooting a platform that was never built for what they needed. The site is now the springboard, not the bottleneck, and the DTG is in a position to do far more with it than they could before.

The momentum from the RCI project was immediate. Other businesses within the group started asking for their own refresh. People were already talking about what comes next, which features to add, which ideas to explore. That energy, Lucy says, is the real result.

“I’ve been on projects before where you’ve launched something and everyone’s just like, okay, cool, and gets on with their day job. But people are really engaged. They’re like, maybe we could try this thing next. And I think that’s exactly where we wanted to be.”