In the past few months, I’ve been privileged to attend industry events including the DPP Media Supply Festival, Devoncroft Executive Summit, and our own SDVI Media Supply Chain Council. One of the most striking themes that has emerged from these presentations and discussions is how much media operations leaders are benefitting from the adoption of cloud-based supply chains. Time and time again, they share stories of the profound, tangible benefits that these technologies deliver to their organizations. And these benefits are truly transformative.
With enhanced visibility and measurability within their media supply chains, media organizations have established precise tracking of where savings are realized, where efficiencies are found, and where capacity gains occur. Now capable of measuring supply chain productivity—defined as units of work per hour of effort or units of output per measure of work—they are gaining a new understanding of their operations. They have access to actionable intelligence and numbers that drive operational behavior, as well as their ability to recognize further optimization opportunities.
Measurable and Meaningful Transformations
A+E Networks EMEA recently announced its deployment of the Rally media supply chain management platform, and they have already seen a reduction in manual touches. While a shift to the cloud inherently introduces greater flexibility and efficiency, the move to an orchestrated, highly automated media supply chain in the cloud delivers substantial measurable results.
“Rally is enabling us to shift from siloed operations to an integrated cloud-based supply chain with which we’re realizing the increased flexibility, speed, and control we need to support our EMEA operations,” says Jan-Hendrik Hein, Vice President of Media Operations at A+E Networks EMEA. “Data-driven automated workflows have already allowed us to reduce repetitive manual tasks significantly and free up skilled operators to focus on where they can add even greater value. As content comes in from suppliers, for example, we’ve reduced the manual touches across the workflow from 16 to just four.”
With automation of the ingest workflow, content that arrives in the evening from A+E Networks U.S. can be processed overnight and ready for operators in the morning, accelerating the workflow by six to 10 hours. In addition to facilitating greater automation, cloud-enabled media supply chain management has centralized data management and improved visibility across these operations. As a result, various departments can now access up-to-date information, eliminating extensive email communication, time-consuming spreadsheet management, or duplication of common tasks.
Realizing Dramatic Efficiency Gains Across the Board
A+E Networks in the U.S. has reported similarly dramatic results. During a presentation by Dave Klee, VP of strategic media solutions at A+E Networks, I learned that by using cloud-based media supply chains the organization realized a 98% reduction in the time required to prepare and load content for edit projects. From the time ingest of a new, finished program completes to the edit starting, they reduced process steps by 84% and manual steps by 50%, in turn cutting overall process time from hours to an average of just minutes. For edit-to-air supply chains, A+E Networks also achieved a large overall process time reduction, but more importantly a 78% reduction in manual steps – highly automating what was a process with a lot of manual touchpoints. And when it came to moving content to their partner A+E Networks EMEA, they were also able to highly automate what had been a very manual process – leading to an 80% overall process time reduction, with an 83% reduction in manual steps.
Dave summarized the transformation simply: “We have realized huge volume increases, made possible by elastic infrastructure in the cloud and agile supply chain techniques.”
Using Data Points as Levers of Increasing Productivity
If you attended the Devoncroft or DPP events this year, you likely also heard how NBCUniversal has leveraged cloud-based supply chain solutions to great effect. Megan Mauck, Senior Vice President of Media Operations for TechOps, provided an enlightening perspective (and stunning metrics) related to those improvements.
NBCUniversal uses cloud-based supply chain orchestration and automation to standardize processing of incoming assets to create consistent masters, each of which is published up to 40 times. Because the company’s media supply chain management platform enables it to track granular costs, NBCUniversal has been able to determine that increasing automation has reduced the average operations cost per asset from $6.50 to $1.30.
Leveraging this visibility into cost, NBCUniversal has implemented a content tiering model that aligns manual touches and associated cost to content value, driving an even more efficient supply chain. These savings are not just numbers on a spreadsheet; they represent real money that can be redirected towards creative endeavors or further technological advancements.
Rapid Results From a Pilot Implementation
Another set of observations came from a pilot implementation by a major broadcaster that adopted a cloud-based media supply chain management platform. Testing how well the cloud environment would enable it to modernize its media supply chain, the broadcaster achieved a significant reduction in operational time and costs. Though just a pre-production trial, the implementation not only demonstrated the platform’s capacity to handle real-time media operations efficiently but also provided actionable insights into optimizing workflows and resource allocation.
“Within a three-month period, we set up the entire media supply chain management platform, built an end-to-end workflow, and trained personnel to operate, maintain and customize the system. Deployment of this cloud-native system met or exceeded all success metrics: In transitioning processed long-form content to the cloud-based supply chain, we have realized 36% increase in efficiency in the ingest-to-archive process overall,” according to the user’s evaluation report.
Through the platform’s API and through connections to third-party tools, the broadcaster was able to capture metrics for all processes within the system. Across key QC tasks, the organization surpassed its goal of reducing overall time by at least 20%. Operators were able to complete most tasks faster, and some as much as six times faster than with legacy systems. Through automation and orchestration, manual workflow steps for ingest were eliminated completely, taking a 40-minute process to zero, and content coordination tasks were likewise trimmed to exception-based manual touches.
The Path Forward
More and more companies are experiencing the real-world benefits of implementing cloud-based supply chains. Once they make this shift, they can optimize, using concrete metrics to fuel ever greater productivity. They realize their potential to do more — to operate more intelligently and drive higher content throughput.
When you first look at some of the metrics, you may not believe them; the magnitude of change is almost unbelievable. That’s why, for operations of any size, the transition to cloud-enabled media supply chains can be exciting and rewarding. The transformative effects seen by early adopters provide a compelling argument for making the leap, ensuring that media organizations are as dynamic and resilient as the content they produce.
The buzz around cloud transformations at recent industry gatherings has been palpable. The sense of community and shared success that cloud-enabled media supply chain technologies foster is perhaps most encouraging. Leaders are not just meeting their goals; they are exceeding them and eagerly sharing their stories.
If their real-world results resonate with you, it might be time to consider how your organization can also benefit from this technological revolution. Get in touch, and we’ll show you how.
