Client Success Media & Entertainment Operational Workflow Automation

Our custom software development has generated over $25 billion in revenue for our clients. Learn how Railroad19’s expertise can benefit your company.

Client Success Stories

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Executive Summary

Railroad19 designs and implements custom software solutions to automate  media workflows at scale. We helped our clients to overcome challenges  integrating disparate operations and different vendor solutions in a reliable and  scalable manner.  

Our clients run Media Operations to support over $10 Billion

The scalable solution we developed supported our clients’ migration from tape to  digital, broadcast to streaming, on-premise to the cloud while integrating  operations that had previously operated in silos. 

Our Solution 

Our solution integrated and automated the operational post production prep  operations spanning broadcast, digital, studio, and international distribution. • Broadcast Post Production Prep  

  • Streaming Prep  
  • Linear and Digital Commercial Prep  
  • Linear and Digital Promo Prep  
  • International Prep  
  • Digital Distribution Prep  
  • Studio Vault Feature and TV Distribution Prep  
  • Studio Episodic Post Production 

Specifically, we integrated the order schedule that feeds into each of these  operations with the exact state of the media and media components across the  enterprise. We integrated that order/schedule information with very fine-grained  media awareness. Our media integration spanned LTO’s, near-lines, working  storage, playout and transcoding storage as well vault and tape registries to build  the comprehensive need of the operation. 

Our solutions have allowed our clients to change as required by the business and  flexibly scale as required by the operational needs of Media & Entertainment. 

Client Challenge 

Operational workflows for distribution are varied and can be difficult to manage at  scale. Our client was running multiple media operation rooftops to support the  diverse media distribution needs of the business. 

Our client challenged us to design and implement the solution to manage  workflows across multiple vendors, multiple networks, and multiple distribution  channels.  

Historical investment in facilities, vendors, and training had divided the operation,  sometimes hampering efficiency.  

  • Post-production operations at different cable brands had overlapping  capacity and were duplicating efforts. 
  • Post-production operations for US and international distribution were  duplicating efforts 
  • Distribution operation at the various Studio operations had overlapping  capacity and were duplicating efforts 
  • Digital Distribution operations were rapidly stood up to meet immediate  needs but had formed overlapping capacity with Studio Distribution and  Broadcast post-production prep 

Immediate Benefits 

Our solutions eliminated $8MM in costs and delivered significant scale to the  media supply chain operation. Using the software solutions we developed, our  client was able to develop a more reliable and scalable operation that can respond  to the immediate challenges as well as meet the longer-term requirements from  the business. Our solution helped eliminate the operational silos that frequently  stand in the way of rapid success. 

The solutions we developed consolidated all distribution schedules and all media  assets into two distributed solutions that coordinated the need for media  distribution with the availability of media assets. Our solutions then expanded to  provide the functionality to manage all of the intermediate production and post production steps to fulfill the distribution needs. 

Our client was able to set up operations in targeted locations that cooperated  instead of overlapping in functionality. The diverse locations were cost-efficient  and provided disaster recovery capabilities to the business.  

Our solution provided the flexibility into the cloud as the media operation needed  to grow for new business launches, premier sporting and entertainment events,  and business acquisitions. 

Longer term Challenges and Opportunities 

Consumption and distribution patterns for our clients’ media is changing. Our  industry is consolidating to meet need for greater scale and efficiency. Product vendors are developing solutions to address new capabilities for subsets of the operational workflow.  

Over the longer-term, we continued to develop the media awareness with an eye toward the information that was usable for sales operations. Studio TV Distribution, Digital, and International sales cycles slow down as the account teams work to figure whether it is possible to deliver content to a particular outlet or territory in the timeframe that the client requires.  

Our longer-term challenge was to design and implement the solutions to flex as our clients’ operation grew in scale while being flexible enough to incorporate new capabilities into the workflow. The cloud and AWS have provided us with very important capabilities to meet these challenges. Our team designed to take advantage of these capabilities and delivered the reliable and scalable implementation our clients require.  

Well Architected Reliability at Scale 

We bring a special perspective when implementing the AWS Well Architected Framework in this special environment. Railroad19 has the experience to evaluate and implement operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization through the unique lens of media and entertainment.