For a change, India is found leading the world in virtualisation of content in the Media and Entertainment (M&E) business thereby creating an edge in this domain.
India’s top M&E companies namely Star India, Zee Entertainment, Sony and Colors have already adopted the digital mode in key workflow processes across the supply chain, two years ahead their western counterparts thus sharply increasing the output of their executives engaged in content creation and saving 30 to 40 per cent on cost.
In this digital drive by moving their content to the cloud, these firms are now able to have real time collaboration in the areas of production and distribution, reach out to their overseas customers in a few hours of the local telecast, supply video on demand to customers and prevent piracy.
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India went from paper to paperless in the 90s, the manufacturing sector embraced Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) during the same time to transform its processes and the banking sector underwent drastic changes by adopting information technology in a big way but the M&E sector functioned the way it was.
Considering that M&E business never had a big craze for technology adoption, Indian M&E companies, which had skipped technology generations are now actually leading the revolution across the world, according experts.
While Star India adopted the digital process in all its workflow, the equivalent of ERP in manufacturing, in April 2011, others gradually followed and are now 18 to 24 months ahead of their global peers. To put things in prospective M&E companies from the U.K. and the U.S. are adopting media ERP only now.
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With the change, M&E executives are now able to live in the physical world and work on several content forms in the virtual world available on digital devices without being actually present at every location, be it the place of shooting, studio or editing room. They are now able to access unedited or edited video anytime and place of their choice.
This has been made possible by an Indian company called Prime Focus Technologies (PFT), a part of the world’s largest integrated media services company Prime Focus Ltd., which has aggregated the diverse stakeholders of the TV/advertising industry on a single virtual platform shared by broadcasters, production houses, ad creative and media agencies.
“We had predicted long back that applications will soon become a utility. Generally, economic activity drives technology but ours is a classic case where technology drives economic activity in the M&E space. The Indian M&E sector was the first adopter of our Clear Media ERP, the specialised solution, which digitises the media supply chain for every media and entertainment professional in the world. Technology always tells the truth and utilisation of the Media ERP has resulted in savings of 30 to 40 per cent in terms of cost efficiencies,” said Ramki Sankaranarayanan, Founder and CEO, PFT.
With the introduction of the digital media supply chain content creation, dissemination and distribution process has become more creatively enabled. Real time collaboration is helping in the creation of better content and instant interaction has enhanced the process of content creation.
This media ERP is driving efficiencies and is helping in reduction of cycle time. It has also enabled newer revenue streams apart from curbing piracy. It has led to contextual advertising and enabling internet platforms to intelligently engage users, said experts.
The benefits are so alluring that now 85 per cent of the scripted television in Hollywood is using PFT’s solutions.
In an era of the ‘death of appointment viewing’, Mr. Sankaranarayanan said, “The next phase of evolution is Digital Next Realities where content providers have to engage customers with a better experience anytime anyplace. The success of Hotstar app by Star India with 1.4 crore downloads shows that Indians are now ready to consume content whenever wherever they want so broadcasters will have to make it accessible in the relevant preferred devices.”