Those who follow me on Linkedin or Twitter you may have seen that we have been in the show TV Connect in London. There we could see the high degree of maturity of this sector. There is enough on offer to a broadcaster may make the jump to the models OnLinewhatever the type chosen (IPTV, VOD, SVOD, hbbtv...), whatever the model (SaaS, licensing...), and considering all the added values in the service as DRM, Encoding and transcoding, BigData, Monetisation, billing, user management, etc...

Given this scenario, clearly advantageous because it allows for a further exploitation of the content to any television, producer or owner of rights, I make the following reflection: Are you prepared these players to face what is that supposed to step to onlineor will this strategy in a nightmare in terms of the management of the operations?

In general (of course there are exceptions), the televisions in our country have the processes and operations based on the needs of the linear continuity traditional. That is to say, a single output that can be managed using manual processes and tools type Excel. For example, to make a grill in a spreadsheet and send it to the operators of continuity for the import (or type) in the automation, to enter the application of the EPG to manually enter the schedule, prepare and send a Word or PDF) to the newspapers, etc...

Here as always. But, what happens when the online service provider which we have selected requires the same or more? Do you turn to enter the metadata manually in your system (another plus)? How we built manually an XML file, by copying the metadata of multiple systems, or what is worse, several Excel documents where we have introduced?

More thoughts: What happens to companies that do not use a unique identifier from the first intake? Or those who do not use ever! How can we automate the delivery to the online, if we are unable to identify the material without human intervention? We will seek the middle, the download of the file, the transcodificaremos with one or more watchfolders in addition to that we already have for the website and for internal services (commercial, marketing, management), renombraremos the file and upload it to the CDN, do everything manually?

Another case, there are broadcasters that still divided physically contained in several files that correspond to the various blocks you have to throw continuity to give step-by advertising. Currently, the automation and the video servers are already able to do this task by using segments with time codes, but is dragged this way of functioning from the time of the tapes. For the issuance linear this leads to a problem of flexibility if you want to add or remove blocks advertising, but How to adapt this process to the online business, which of course requires a single file for the content? Does editing the block two times, one to separate them, and the other to unite them?

In the end many companies end up building a new online department of parallelwith other processes, other systems, other unique identifiers (it is a paradox to have several unique identifiers for the same content), doubling the average ... what Is the point of all this? Is it really a scalable model? (Now that it is fashionable to this concept).

From all this it is concluded that the leap to the online requires an analysis of the current processes. To study if you are working with the linear manner consistent with the online, to do things two or more times. Automate everything that can be using management tools and integration and adapting internal processes to the new demands, even if it means breaking with workflows of the past. This is the only way you will be able to incorporate new business models without falling into a nightmare of duplication of tasks, inefficient processes and resulting added costs and hidden. The managers of the enterprises tend not to know the details of all the processes that the inefficiency hidden is very common in our industry.

Those who have tried will agree with me that the monetization of the online is not easy, so there is a decrease in all possible operating costs that implies the adoption of the new model so that it does not become a deficit model, and, what was a strategic decision of adoption of a new business model, end up being supported by students in practice because... it at least a web there you have it!

The players global (Netflix, Facebook, Google...) do not have a past analogue that would penalize the adoption of new business models. Are we equal? The digital transformation requires an internal review of every home so as not to fall into the same mistakes. Remember that technology is only an enabler, not the business. We do not believe that everything will be resolved based resources and software if the base is not properly adjusted.

Let me finish talking about my book. In Ebantic we have two value propositions related to all of this. We are consultants of processes, so that we can examine the way to function in a company of media and to adapt it to the current reality, defining and helping to implement the new processes, including the dreaded change management. On the other hand, our product, BPM4media, you can add the information from different systems and to automate (and transform) the outputs of the metadata and a half to the different service providers, from playouts linear, whether on premises or cloud, to online platforms. All this is accompanied with a dashboard that allows you to monitor at all times that is happening in the process and make corrections if necessary.