Making media asset management work
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As members of the IABM (International Association of Broadcasting Manufacturers), Boxer Systems has benefited from insights on the Broadcast Industry from Adrian Scott at The Bakewell House Consultancy via presentations at the IABM Member Days and articles in the IABM Journal. The following article by Adrian was featured in the recent IABM Journal, 3rd Quarter 2010, Edition 76. We've put it up here due to its relevancy to our work and the insights it offers.
Making Media Asset Management Work
Adrian Scott
The Bakewell House Consultancy
At this year's NAB, while the hype may have been mostly about 3-D, seasoned observers also reported serious conversations going on about monetisation, workflow and, above all, about Media Asset Management (MAM). For IABM members who supply systems or point products, this is important because MAM by its very nature must interact with practically every component in the production and distribution chain.
To gear up for today's new media universe, media companies must radically change the way they do business...and the way they operate. They must learn how to manufacture and deliver content to anyone who is prepared to pay for it, using a variety of mechanisms and channels.
Fundamental to this change, and fundamental to any business which makes and sells a product, is knowing what they have in their inventory, where it is, how to retrieve it, how to process and package it for a variety of target markets, how much it cost to acquire or produce, and what the market will bear as a purchase price for it. And having established all of that, they then have to develop the capability to repurpose their media assets in an agile enough manner to exploit whatever markets present themselves.
This is why so many broadcasters are reaching a critical threshold in needing to control, manage and ultimately monetise significant quantities of media assets. A crucial part of the answer to their problem is MAM.
No "one size fits all solutions"
However, implementing a MAM system (or DAM, Digital Asset Management, if you prefer a slightly different three-letter acronym) is not just a matter of picking one off the shelf. Despite what some manufacturers will tell you, there are no "one size fits all" solutions in the broadcast MAM marketplace. There are several reasons for this:
Firstly, in order to deliver real business benefit, MAM must be integrated with many other broadcast processes and systems. While the core functions of MAM are ingest, indexing, storage and retrieval of media, to be really effective those functions must be seamlessly combined with the production processes such as the creation and editing of video, audio and graphics. They must also be integrated with automated delivery systems, which include traditional scheduled playout but go further to take in interactive and over-the-top TV, video-on-demand, catch-up and plus-one channels, websites, and mobile phones to name just some.
Most MAM systems on the market have a heritage which goes back to archiving, production, or automation. few natively incorporate all three, and this creates the need for sophisticated multivendor integrations, which works not only when a system is first implemented, but keeps on working as individual components of the system evolve and are updated.
Secondly, in addition to the broadcast functions, a MAM system must be able to communicate and ideally interoperate with IT-based business systems such as scheduling, right management, resource management, and accounting, and also share common networks with them. This is a separate but often no less challenging task than that of integrating the media-centric operations. Increasingly, broadcasters are looking to integrate other business-critical functions such as CRM, billing and business intelligence, which add to the complexity of the overall landscape.
No two broadcasters have the same existing broadcast and IT infrastructures, or the same selection of production, delivery and business systems. This is why MAM vendors big and small have historically found it difficult to offer "out of the box" solutions. A broadcaster who wants "best of breed" functionality in every area must be prepared for a difficult and possibly lengthy integration process involving multiple vendors. On the other hand, a broadcaster who wants to minimise problems with integration must be satisfied with "just good enough" functionality from a vendor who places higher priority on offering an integrated system.
Moreover, no two broadcasters have the same operational procedures or workflows. Implementing MAM inevitably involves implementing significant organisational and process change, and this can be as big a challenge as joining up all the technology elements.
The key to successful implementations
The truth is, the most successful MAM implementations in the broadcast domain are those where the broadcaster has adopted something of a DIY approach,has taken responsibility for some or all of the integration work, and has been prepared to embrace change at every level. In many cases an appreciation of the need for MAM has been an important catalyst for change.
An analysis of successful broadcast MAM implementations shows that there are some broadly common features in the way that widely differing broadcasters have approached MAM projects, whether they are at workgroup level or across the whole enterprise.
Firstly, and most importantly, they clearly understand what they want to do in a business sense, and work to achieve an internal consensus about where they are today, and where they want to be tomorrow.
This includes a careful analysis of the business case around the project, making sure the ROI is understood and the resourcing secure. Many MAM projects have hit problems when the business case (and senior management sponsorship) loses impetus during the life of the project.
Successful MAM projects are usually administered according to a well-defined governance model involving both formal project management disciplines and a communications strategy which includes all of the stakeholders (especially users) and which provides accurate oversight over project progress.
Another success factor is a clear deployment strategy which takes in both risk management and change management, and in particular charts how operational processes and associated workflows will evolve through the project.
Working with suppliers
The next major step is to combine all of the insights already gained into what they want to do and why, with how they mean to implement change, into an overall solution architecture, which then becomes the basis for a specification accurately describing the outcome they would like to achieve. This sets internal benchmarks and also becomes the basis for discussion with manufacturers and service providers, leading to an RFP process where vendors are invited to propose how their products and services would help solve the broadcaster's problem.
Clearly, there is an element of give and take about this process, as the broadcasters's requirements and existing infrastructure and vendors' offerings are matched up and an overall solution is arrived at.
In many cases this involves development work of one kind or another, and this must be factored into the project in both time and cost terms. It may also involve the brokering of relationships between manufacturers, to ensure a smooth initial integration between their products, and continued collaboration as time goes on. Although there has been much useful standards activity in recent years, it is not always the case that different manufacturers will adopt standards using the same approach. In some cases the choice of one manufacturer, for example of a camera manufacturer with a particular capture format, will either mandate or rule out other manufacturers' products further along the production chain.
Another crucial success factor is the on-the-ground implementation process. Answers have to be found to the problem of how to launch a new system effectively while (unless it is a green-field site) maintaining the current level of service. For many this means setting up a dedicated training system where bugs can be identified and resolved, new workflows can be tested out and users thoroughly familiarised and trained until they feel both capable and confident. If bugs are found and fixed, it is far better to do it on a training system than live on air, and switching over to a live system will be far easier if users are familiar and comfortable with their part of it.
Once everything is up and running for real, then comes the necessity to maintain it and render it future proof...but that is another story!
One way or another, MAM is a current or imminent issue for every broadcaster. Implementing it may seem to be a dauntingly complex and difficult task, but as more and more successful projects are completed, integrators and manufacturers gain experience in how to do it, broadcasters can approach MAM projects with more confidence and less trepidation.