How to re-imagine the future of media production and grow your brand

As media com­pa­nies strive to deliv­er more con­tent, to more places, more of the time, there is an increas­ing need for oper­a­tional process­es to be as effi­cient as pos­si­ble.

To meet this chal­lenge, we must first acknowl­edge that the indus­try is still evolv­ing — espe­cial­ly with­in the areas of image, IP and work­flow — and high­light the ben­e­fits of focus­ing on the entire media busi­ness and not just our media assets.

Let’s be hon­est. Have we real­ly made the most of file-based work­flows? Or have we sim­ply deployed dig­i­tal ver­sions of lega­cy ana­logue process­es? Sure, we have come a long way in a short space of time and dig­i­tal is now per­va­sive in many oper­a­tions, but to tru­ly ben­e­fit from IT and IP, we need to go fur­ther than just digi­tis­ing the ana­logue ways of work­ing.

For many con­tent providers around Europe, cur­rent sys­tems and pro­ce­dures are not agile or flex­i­ble enough to cope with the ‘mod­ern’ approach to media, where evolv­ing dig­i­tal plat­forms and the rapid­ly chang­ing con­sumer habits have com­bined to cre­ate a dynam­ic and com­pet­i­tive envi­ron­ment. And they cer­tain­ly aren’t capa­ble of han­dling what will come next.

This is a new world, one where retain­ing (or even re-acquir­ing) the audi­ence is no longer just about the qual­i­ty of the sto­ry­telling, it’s also about ensur­ing sup­port for the plat­forms the tar­get audi­ence want to use.

On an oper­a­tional lev­el, those involved in the con­tent cre­ation sup­ply chain often still have to jump from sys­tem to sys­tem to com­plete dif­fer­ent process­es, using dif­fer­ent tools for each dif­fer­ent out­put, not always with the lat­est details or con­tent. And adding any new tools, sys­tems or ways of work­ing can be a slow and expen­sive process.

Yet, it doesn’t have to be this way.

With the cor­rect sys­tems and pro­ce­dures in place, it is now pos­si­ble to not just effi­cient­ly store and man­age our assets but to real­ly make them work for us, deliv­er­ing real busi­ness ben­e­fits through automat­ing process­es, track­ing assets and opti­mis­ing work­flows. Most impor­tant­ly, we can also gain a true under­stand­ing of the cost of our oper­a­tions and, there­after, get more val­ue out of them.

But to do that, change is required. And change is a huge chal­lenge for many. For­tu­nate­ly, it’s not an impos­si­ble one.

Change is always more daunt­ing when tak­ing the jour­ney alone. So that’s why part­ner­ships should always be con­sid­ered. By shar­ing knowl­edge, skills and expe­ri­ence we can be more con­fi­dent in our pre­dic­tions, make it eas­i­er to keep track of what the rest of the mar­ket is doing and learn from the mis­takes of oth­ers.

At Sony we recog­nise that in a com­pet­i­tive and diverse mar­ket, agile and elas­tic oper­a­tional mod­els and tech­nolo­gies are required if media com­pa­nies are to achieve trans­for­ma­tion­al growth. And we believe that the best way to do this is with a part­ner who wants to share your strate­gic goals. Sony is that part­ner.

This is not just about your tech­nol­o­gy needs. This also includes ser­vices, sup­port, finance and con­sid­ered, trust­ed advice. Under­stand­ing your over-arch­ing busi­ness require­ments and how to over­come your oper­a­tional chal­lenges is what fuels our engage­ment and dri­ves our strat­e­gy.

By part­ner­ing with us, and let­ting our pro­fes­sion­al solu­tions experts analyse your work­flows, we can devise a bespoke strat­e­gy that deliv­ers tan­gi­ble ben­e­fits to your busi­ness. Solu­tions provider, part­ner, col­league, asso­ciate, co-work­er — call it what you will. We align our ser­vices and our mar­ket lead­ing appli­ca­tions to fit your work­flow needs. We improve per­for­mance by work­ing togeth­er, help­ing you to do more with less, in turn mod­ernising your oper­a­tions.

Through under­stand­ing your strate­gies and chal­lenges, and mak­ing use of our 40 years of exper­tise and our mar­ket-lead­ing solu­tions, we can deliv­er prac­ti­cal ben­e­fits to your busi­ness. Ben­e­fits that will con­tin­ue to grow over time.

Now is the time to let your teams re-imag­ine the future of media pro­duc­tion and grow your brand. And we’re here to help you do it.

Empow­er­ing sto­ry­tellers to tell amaz­ing sto­ries by unleash­ing the incred­i­ble Pow­er of Images.

www.pro.sony.eu/imageipworkflow
@SonyProEurope