For many years, data size limits and the capabilities of digital technologies in the media industry were not advanced enough to handle the large volume of data and workload required. It is only recently that computing, storage, and broadband speeds have been developed to cater to these requirements. With these technological advances, the time is ripe for the digitization of the media and entertainment industry. 

“The trend in the industry is to move to an intelligent media supply chain that capitalizes on AI and automation to facilitate creative collaboration, enable production on an industrial scale, and monetize customer relationships. This is a strategic transformation that cuts across technology, process, and organizational change,” stated Rajesh Shunmugam, AVP and Head of Media and Entertainment at Infosys. Rajesh shared insights about the shift in the industry in a recent blog, and we cover the highlights here: silos as an obstacle and how to create greater synergy through the Salesforce platform. 

Digitization in silos is an obstacle

The last few decades have seen major advancements in formats and technology within the media and entertainment industry formats and technology. But even though you may be using the most cutting-edge equipment to produce content, you might notice processes not changing much. That’s due to digitization happening in silos. 

“We’re seeing a number of siloed production and distribution processes starting to migrate to the cloud. Players within the media supply chain have already begun their own cloud migration initiatives. However, while these processes may have moved to the cloud, they are still in siloes and are not talking to each other. This ‘lift and shift’ approach brings limited benefits,” explains Rajesh.

Creating greater synergy through a platform approach

Only an overarching workflow transformation can bring in the disruptive, game-changing benefits that digitization promises. Given the complexities involved in the media supply chain, there are several vendors/tools that are used at each step of the supply chain. Bringing all of these together through a platform that integrates all the tools and creates synergies is the way to go.

Guiding principles to keep in mind to build an end-to-end, completely digitized supply chain:

Holistic view: Create visibility and allow secure collaboration across the production ecosystem. This will improve delivery and scalability and decrease the total cost of operations.

Optimize content movement: You want to move the content as little as possible because of the large file sizes. Instead, you can bring the process to the content instead with a studio operations workflow platform and a Digital Asset Management platform. 

Real-time metadata: Digital enablers like machine learning, and video/audio/image recognition can be implemented to generate metadata in real-time. This will provide a more accurate and timely content delivery workflow.

“As media and entertainment become more advanced with the advent of 5G, new distribution and consumption channels, and new formats, the benefits of digitization will come to the fore. Key to this transformation is a unifying fabric that uses smart workflows, incorporates automation, machine learning, and AI, and orchestrates cloud-native media and cognitive services from a closely integrated partner ecosystem,” concluded Rajesh.

Click here to read Rajesh’s full blog.  

Simplus is an Infosys company.