When StorerTV began integrating our world class CentriX workflow engine into our Media clients' operations, we quickly found that there is a real need for broad workflow applications across the breadth of operations. We expected that operations would need to automate their program versioning and distribution systems or address the interconnection needs of their master control play-out operation. As we spend more time assisting clients with workflow applications, we are finding true return on investment is unique in every situation, and we have been pleasantly surprised by the innovative requests for workflow automation. Here are just a few of the ideas requested by our customers:

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• Programming Contract approval

• The workflow requirement is to initiate and track the inter-office programming contract approval process with management notification of the completion or status of each approval step. It uses automatic or time based escalation procedures to be triggered if a process becomes delayed. The workflow integrates various back office software systems to reduce duplicative data entry chores.

• Long Form Content Preparation

• Create a management dashboard to track, route, and report on the interdepartmental preparation steps for the long-form content as it is readied for broadcast. This workflow is designed to prioritize and schedule content processing by "first to air" date.

• Log Preparation

• In a large, multi-location operation, track interdepartmental steps to complete and deliver the log to master control operations and communicate delays that may impact other departments. This workflow includes dashboards and escalation procedures.

• Content Preparation

• Automate and integrate a multi-thread workflow to track and report the content receipt and preparation processes including ingesting of media, version transcoding where required, quality control, delivery to Asset Management storage, near-line and archival data, and the delivery to the master control operations center in a remote location. Additionally, this workflow presents customized steps to users based on both content-type and "first air date".

• Deal Memo

• Create and route program contract "deal memos" through a defined internal approval process. Provide a management overview of the process, and any delays, and automatically update software systems when the approval process is completed.

• Intra-Company Communications Enhancements

• Between a network and its operational playback center, track content receipt and preparation for air, report on the daily log status including media status, and supply a unified, jointly accessible dashboard displaying log and content ready-to-air status. This workflow employs innovative communication objects to provide management status updates without compromising either company's network security systems.

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Each of these ideas provides a unique level of savings, either in actual labor costs or avoidance of costs. Most of the workflows are designed to provide management with a new view into their procedures, and escalation triggers to ensure smooth and timely operations. As you consider enhanced workflows to streamline your organization and reporting, our media experts can offer ideas, applications, and tried solutions for your consideration.

 

Today, the buzz in the Industry is all about workflow and how solidly designed workflow properly implemented provides measurable efficiencies and return on investment. As a media executive seeking these efficiencies, the marketplace is a bit confused as almost every vendor will pitch their "workflows" as a solution. The reality is that there are really two basic types of these applications:

1. An interconnection within an operational element of your broadcast or media chain, such as a transcoder farm or a satellite ingest service for master control room automation.
2. A much broader application of software engines to enhance or automate the interfaces between major systems, such as your back office software, the play-out and distribution chain, or the production tools.

Deploying a broad workflow system to integrate your systems can automate repetitive operations, employ business rules to enhance human interfaces, provide management dashboards and solidify your processes and procedures for continuing training and constant improvement, all of which lead to measurable ROI.

Weighing the Value of End-to-end Workflow Integration

So, as a manager, how can you best gain these efficiencies? Some would argue that you need to define and build a complete, end-to-end solution, and some of our industry leaders have invested in the infrastructure and have deployed all-inclusive systems. But for the majority of operators, this expensive and lengthy process is too difficult and costly to support, and nearly impossible to "future-proof" as equipment, software and systems change and upgrade on an annual basis.

A wiser and more cost effective approach is to target specific areas of potential efficiencies and employ a workflow engine to address incremental deployments. This integration will take more time and involves multiple vendors during the integration process; however it will leave your organization in control of the specific areas

It is much easier to defend an incremental deployment, where regular measurements can show real savings in time, labor, training or an increase in capacity

of deployment, as well as trained in the methodologies and tools to address the regular and inevitable workflow modifications that occur naturally as vendors in the workflow chain upgrade and update their systems and software.

This incremental approach allows your organization to leverage existing equipment and implement a unique workflow that is best for your operations, a workflow that embraces and enhances the specific vision that makes your company successful.

Any manager will be asked to defend capital expenses and it is hard to justify purchasing a monolithic deployment where every department and individual is touched by a part of the new system--it is much easier to defend an incremental deployment, where regular measurements can show real savings in time, labor, training or an increase in capacity. In the incremental approach, you can define small targeted projects with recognizable returns, keep the costs under strict control, minimize the organizational upheaval, and lower your overall risk. Yes, it will take longer to manage and completely integrate a complex workflow system, and sometime the requirements of the system evolve during the deployment, especially if the process is planned over multiple years.

Managing a workflow implementation does not have to be a major undertaking with outside consultants, lots of management oversight (and overtime!) and high cost. Any company can target specific system improvements and model an end goal. The key to success is to talk to the users and "map" how media assets, people, physical resources and time interact in your system and define the business rules for the workflow engine, especially what should happen when a process "fails" or is "late." Your number one asset is your human capital—great workflows save time, money and free up your staff for more important tasks.

 

Flexible by design, CorporateXpress (CX) is deployed differently by the different television groups that use our SIMS software, depending on management philosophy or strategic directions. Some of our clients use CX to "push down" information from corporate to each of their station operations, while other "roll up" information from the station level, and still others employ a combination of these operations.

The best way to illustrate the potential of the software is to discuss its application in a case study format:

A Case Study

One large television group has integrated CX into their financial and programming workflows to increase labor efficiencies and reduce duplication at both levels of their organization, corporate and the station level. Their integration has provided real, measurable return on investment, so it is helpful to outline each of their applications:

1. They use CX to enter any contracts that have associated cash – Cash contracts and Cash Barter Contracts. This is done by 2 staff personnel, one on the east coast and one on the west. "Barter only" contracts are entered by each station/market, and are not entered by corporate.
2. Payments are set to be made using the corporate database. The group minimizes labor in the finance department by cutting one check to a Distributor that covers all contracts across all stations and markets.
3. CX is configured so that even if the payment schedules are managed in the corporate database, the payment schedules are "cast down" to the branch station databases as read-only entries. When payments are made at corporate, the payments are "cast down"to the stations as read only entries as well. That way, local business managers can pull reports on what has been paid, what hasn't been paid, future cash flow reports, etc. At the corporate level, these same reports are pulled using the corporate database "roll up" reporting.
4. To further their labor savings at the station level, a single individual employs the CX software to provide network scheduling: A network affiliate schedule is entered in the corporate database and then "cast down" to the 5 owned and affiliated stations they have in a hub operation. This saves each of the stations time and labor.
5. At the corporate office, a number of daily, weekly and monthly reports are gathered from the corporate database. Some of these reports have been customized to provide a unique review of the data, and others are scheduled for automatic generation and publication.

By using SIMS, a media contract rights and program management system, the corporate level can benefit from the timely analysis and verification of station program asset valuation/amortization for pre-sale preparations. These reports can be very effective in establishing value during the acquisition process and protect the corporate investments.

The Big Picture

By employing tools like SIMS and CorporateXpress, corporate executives will benefit from:

• Centralized Contract entry and management
• Centralized Payment Management and Tracking
• Post one check to a distributor
• Pay for multiple programs and multiple stations
• Track payment history including check level detail
• Centralized Network Scheduling to populate station schedules
• Roll up Contract and Financial Reporting across all stations

 

Top reasons global media operations choose the SIMS non-linear module

Video on Demand, mobile video, IPTV, video snacks... They are the new media and entertainment frontier for entrepreneurs, media conglomerates and programmers who are seeking new sources of revenue. For television stations, pitching local news clips to cable users is just one part of a successful strategy to solidify their brand and increase recognition. It can get overwhelming when managing the contract rights, weekly (and sometimes daily) updates, along with the augmentation of metadata, dealing with the increasing volume of content, and accounting for the plays. This is where the Storer Information Management System (or SIMS) can help.

Preparing Excel spreadsheets for metadata files seems easy at first, but as volume grows, it becomes extremely time consuming. SIMS can facilitate this function for non-linear programmers. If you are sending content to more than a couple of platforms (i.e. VoD, iTunes, Airlines, Hulu, etc.), you will quickly find that it requires too much lead time to check rights after scheduling is done. SIMS automatically checks the contract rights as you schedule, saving an enormous amount of time and effort.

Another time consuming task is manually preparing rotations and refresh schedules for the various titles. In SIMS, the schedules can be refreshed according to the business rules you establish for each distribution platform. SIMS also provides true financial accountability by allowing you to manage your contract across the entire organization. Having the linear and non-linear scheduling performed in the same application that uses the same program assets (even when linear and non-linear scheduling is done in separate departments) is crucial to controlling and monetizing your assets.

What if you are not following a U.S. programing model? One example of the internationalization of SIMS is how it is used by a major European On-Demand system in multiple countries. The flexibility it affords in creating custom codes and fields along with the preparation of data for custom reports and exports is unmatched in the industry. The depth of the database, the open standards support and the solid architecture allows this particular SIMS user to engineer their own integrations and interfaces with third party media factory components. The powerful "Searches" (a fundamental design element of SIMS) are part of this European Broadcaster's tool set for workflow management.

The ease in which titles in SIMS can be placed on the schedule and copied from one on-demand package to another increases operational functionality and workflow. Most importantly, business rules use the contracting module for complex rights management which includes Market Territory, Language and specialized clearance rules for Media. The architecture of SIMS was designed to support the growth of media operations worldwide through powerful multi-lingual title metadata fields and a trusted amortization engine for calculating SL Time amortization of GET contracts.