A cloud-native, integrated content supply chain is critical for any company to succeed in today’s fiercely competitive landscape, where profit is the main measure of success. Choosing the right technology partners will help your business move fast and remain competitive.
By Dan Goman
Original article published at: https://www.newscaststudio.com/2023/02/02/future-proofing-media-supply-chain/?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialpost
If we were to ask any successful company about their superpower, most would likely say “speed.” In the current business landscape, constant change is a given and the ability to adapt quickly, essential. Making the right technology choices so that your business can move fast is key to survival.
This is even more pressing for companies in the ever-shifting media landscape, where content owners, streaming services (large and small), social media platforms and long-time broadcasters all vie for a piece of an extremely disputed audience pie. A recent Bloomberg report went as far as stating that “media companies are having their worst year in three decades” and that “investors are freaked out about the state of the entertainment business.”
It’s no secret that competition for viewers and subscriber retention has reached new heights. Great content helps attract new viewers but retaining them is what matters — and that can only happen when you truly understand your customer viewing habits and provide them with the right content to keep them by your side.
But what’s technology got to do with this? So much. Let me tell you why.
The broken media supply chain
With major shifts in video consumption habits, customer demand has forced broadcast and streaming companies to change their production and distribution models. This brings business challenges that then turn into technology challenges. If your existing technology does not serve the needs of the business, then you have a problem.
Legacy media companies today are repositioning themselves as streaming-first providers, but unless they modernize and optimize their technology back-ends, they will struggle to compete, as it’s plain to see today.
In our experience working with media companies who want to stay ahead of the curve, they need to focus on the following challenges:
Changing consumer viewing habits, across a wide range of devices and locations, and the relentless growth of content consumption, including both new content and repurposed for digital platforms.
Time-to-market has been squashed: whether the business is producing or licensing new content, or reusing existing content for streaming, it needs to be delivered at lightning speed.
The traditional, on-premises, siloed approach to video production and distribution, with each step of the media supply chain happening within its own operational island, is now inadequate. A disconnected, poorly integrated supply chain delivers content to the consumer very inefficiently and cannot respond quickly enough to changing demands, to the detriment of the business.
To add fuel to the fire, there’s been a major shift recently in the streaming service landscape: streaming platforms are now expected to show a profit. With entertainment stocks retreating further than the general market, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s comment on a recent earnings call brings this point home: “Profitability, not purely sub count, is our benchmark for success.”
Investors, executives and stakeholders have little patience for inefficiency and technology experiments that just bleed money and no results. Bringing a tangible return-on-investment is key now. Time to rethink the disconnected supply chain.
What is an integrated supply chain and why should you care?
Going back to the success superpower: To evolve with speed, any company needs to connect the dots across all of its traditional fragmented silos. An integrated supply chain connects each process and each team, so that data flows smoothly to deliver continued, uninterrupted content workflows for an exquisite customer experience.
In the business of producing content, this should start at content ideation, through capture, packaging and distribution, flowing efficiently to the consumer. Gathering key data across the chain is key to making strategic improvements quickly and often.
Cloud infrastructure enables this connectivity through speed, flexibility and centralization. When we talk about a unified global supply chain that’s cloud-centric and cloud-native, we also refer to the implementation of advanced services that enable the retention of customers — for any business.
Comments