SAN FRANCISCO—The business of business systems has changed dramatically over the past few years. Gone are the standalone systems that met one primary goal: managing the tricky business of traffic and billing. Today, the technology has evolved to tackle elements outside the traditional purview of traffic (crewing, anyone?) and must do so in ways that fit both small broadcasters and large multimedia organizations.

Today, solutions found on the market point to integrated systems that many say are far superior alternative to manually assembling a collection of discrete point products.

Sarah Foss, vice president, product management for Imagine Communications That all-in-one mindset also drove the development of Xytech’s MediaPulse, an enterprise-class solution for facility management that handles resource management, order management, asset management, transmission, crewing and financial tasks, and combines those tasks into one system.

The system is crafted with five to 10 different modules that offer clients a number of operational remedies, according to Greg Dolan, chief operating officer for the Mission Hills, Calif.-based company.

The system was written so that it could innovate as new technologies become available and would be able to tackle multiple disparate areas—crewing, transmission, etc.—at once. MediaPulse offers 35 modules that can be coordinated to handle traditional tasks faced by a media facility, such as scheduling, billing and employee management. New features include new order screens for managing intricate workflows, scheduled reports modules, cost tracking, and financial reporting and payroll.

“Standalone scheduling systems are dead,” Dolan said. “If these systems are not talking to one another, they’re losing their relevance.”

Xytech is one of several business management systems that it being put to the test on sport’s biggest stage this summer as NBC uses several different software systems to manage staff, transmission feeds and resources during its coverage of 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio. For Xytech, this effort involved the technical coordination of 3,500 staff members, flights and reporting assignments. MediaPulse is the engine behind a series of systems NBC is using that includes asset management, automation and news scheduling.

Every client has something unique, Dolan said, whether it’s handling content and IP routing requirements for the U.S. Department of State, or managing the behind-the-scenes greenlighting process for Red Bull Media House.

“A customizable platform allows you to speak to a client’s requirements; these have to be glove-fits,” he said. “Islands of individual systems don’t exist anymore.”

This month Xytech launched a Broadcast Services Division to address the changing needs of global video transmission services.

THE BUSINESS OF BUSINESS

The business of managing the business came to a head for SNJ Today as it attempted to do something fairly unique: provide news and programming on Internet radio, via its own local Comcast television station, as well through an AM/FM radio station and local newspaper.

A new user interface from Myers’ latest ProTrack broadcast management system extends the capabilities of the ProTrack hub and Spoke platform, which currently serves as the core infrastructure for multiple centralized content acquisition, playout and storage service providers.
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The New Jersey media company installed the Imagine Communication’s LandmarkOSI traffic and billing ad management system to streamline ad sales across all of those properties: TV, radio, web and print.

By installing an integrated ad management and playout solution from, SNJ Today has improved operations and optimized their business workflow, according to Sarah Foss, vice president, product management for Imagine. “LandmarkOSI provides them a single system to automate and manage ad sales and billing across all their media channels, which enhances their competitive edge and helps them drive new revenue and manage it more efficiently,” she said.

SNJ Today’s integrated system manages ad sales and program scheduling across four separate media channels via integration with Imagine’s Versio automation and playout system.

“We needed a solution that… would give us the quality and professionalism of a ‘big-city’ broadcast station but deliver the efficiencies and ease-of-use we require to be successful,’’ said Ken Pustizzi, president and owner of SNJ Today. The kicker was the ability of the LandmarkOSI to manage ad sales and billing across all of the company’s media channels, he said.

The goal was not only to automate sales, scheduling and playout operations across all media platforms, but also to manage the entire enterprise as a unified operation, Pustizzi said.

GETTING IT TOGETHER

Connectivity with other systems is also a key element of NetInsight’s ScheduALL solutions. The company’s ScheduALL Portal is designed to improve a customer’s ability to book services, resources and even occasional use transmission feeds online in real-time.

According to NetInsight, the Portal is designed to eliminate the traditional communication methods of emails, phone calls and spreadsheets from the booking process and instead allow for customers to book packaged services or individual resources through the system itself.

That connectivity is a cornerstone of ScheduALL Connector as well. This resource management system unites ScheduALL systems across a supply chain, giving users real-time access to a resource inventory. Features include the ability to buy and sell resources in real-time, set up direct system-to-system bookings, and offer a centralized view of availability for subscribed resources.

ScheduALL’s technology is being used by NBC to manage transmission feeds and resources during its coverage of 2016 Summer Games.

Myers is another company pushing beyond traditional workflows to do more than just scheduling and traffic. The Northampton, Mass.-based company has extended the capabilities of its ProTrack Hub and Spoke platform, which currently serves as the core infrastructure for multiple centralized content acquisition, playout and storage service providers.

ProTrack Hub and Spoke enables independent stations to retain their scheduling autonomy, while capitalizing on the efficiency attained as result of shared content repositories and master control resources, according to Crist Myers, Myers CEO.

“Integrations are providing enhanced interoperability and in-turn creating more automated workflows,” he said. For example, more in-depth integration between ProTrack and other vendor partners has enhanced interoperability and bidirectional communication between ProTrack and technical systems, enabling content to move freely across multiple systems within the enterprise based on actual usage/scheduling requirements. The resulting accessibility and visibility, Myers said, is designed to improve workflow efficiency.

Myers also plans to roll out a new ProTrack product release that will feature commercial sales capabilities.

Other solutions look closely at rising trends in digital and programmatic advertising sales. SintecMedia’s Advertising Sales solution connects systems, processes and teams in an effort to grow advertising sales across three areas: properties, media platforms and distribution channels, the company said.

Pieces of the puzzle within the Advertising Sales Solution include reporting and analytics; invoicing, credit and accounting; remote sales; proposal and deal management; and traffic and financial system integration.

Along that same line, the company’s OnBoard system is a single platform for TV, digital and programmatic that specifically allows users to coordinate salespeople, delivery teams and backend systems to create a single cross-platform fulfillment process. Through the system’s web-based buyer portal, customers can buy, manage their accounts and monitor campaign performance.

The company recently partnered with TubeMogul to integrate TubeMogul’s programmatic television solution with On-Board sales and traffic to enable end-to-end programmatic advertising.

“This integration will provide SintecMedia’s clients a better view of demand and ensure they are maximizing their inventory in a private marketplace that is 100 percent integrated with their sales and traffic systems,” said Amir Lavi, president of SintecMedia Americas.

The company also offers OTT nonlinear solutions to manage linear and nonlinear distribution. Features include centralizing a content library by capturing and managing programs, episodes, formats and media as well as manage physical media workflow from procurement through airing. The system can also streamline fulfillment operations.

What’s next? Almost all agree that it’s necessary that modern business management systems offer technology that fits our modern era: cloud connectivity, a mobile interface and connectivity through an app—even though BMS systems are traditionally complicated and visually intricate systems. “Even it it’s feature heavy, it has to fit in a mobile or browser,” Xytech’s Dolan said.

SAN FRANCISCO—Welcome new platforms, enter new headaches. While the content community has aggressively blazed new paths when it comes to disseminating content across multiple formats, one struggle has gone on mostly behind the scenes.

Business management systems—those intricately connected backroom systems that couple scheduling with ad sales and the like—have had to compensate for these new platforms and opportunities, while simultaneously reducing costs and increasing profitability along the way.

No small feat, but one that today’s solutions have begun to address in a number of ways.

Boston flagship PBS station WGBH recently installed a ProTrack Hub & Spoke system to work within WGBH’s larger PMM cloud-based service designed to centralize the acquisition and dissemination of content.SHARED AUTOMATED WORKFLOWS
It’s a model that’s proved its mettle time and again. That was one reason Myers has pushed forward with its ProTrack Hub & Spoke solution. Boston flagship PBS station WGBH recently installed a ProTrack Hub & Spoke system to work within WGBH’s larger PMM cloud-based service designed to centralize the acquisition and dissemination of content.

Using Myers ProTrack Hub & Spoke, media facilities are able to view and pull content into their facilities when it is required for playout. “The design of our ProTrack Hub and Spoke Solution was established to help our clients maximize operational efficiency,” said Crist Myers, CEO of the Northhampton, Mass.-based provider of media and business management systems. In addition to the WGBH installation, the system is up and running at Centralcast LLC in Syracuse, N.Y., a consortium of public TV stations in the state; and the Digital Convergence Alliance, a similar group in Jacksonville, Fla.

The infrastructure of the solution allows an individual station to capitalize on shared automated workflows while still maintaining their autonomy, Myers said, and is designed to help customers reduce operational costs and increase profitability.

The company is also in the midst of a growth spurt, adding staff and introducing new features within the ProTrack Broadcast Management System, a solution that manages acquisition, scheduling, monetization and distribution of content for multimedia facilities, according to Myers.

The company is also rolling out a new technology platform for the ProTrack Broadcast that will include new capabilities and workflows including a new HTML5 front-end.

SIMPLIFYING THE PROCESS
Sometimes the biggest difficulty is changing entrenched ideas. That was the challenge facing Imagine Communications.

Working in partnership with the media service provider Entertainment Communications Network (ECN), the Dallas-based company introduced a new feature within the LandmarkOSI traffic and billing system that can electronically receive and ingest commercial instructions using the SMPTE Broadcast eXchange Format (BXF) 3.0.

That small addition is working to change 40 years of advertising workflows, the company said.

“The new automated copy feature can yield significant efficiency gains for our LandmarkOSI traffic and billing customers, improving productivity, and reducing copy input mistakes and discrepancies,” said Sarah Foss, vice president of product management and advertising management systems for Imagine Communications.

The goal was to eliminate the longstanding process of manually typing copy instructions from e-mail or fax originals into a traffic system, she said. Commercial schedules can be ingested using XML to help eliminate the labor-intensive process of manually rekeying information, which helps reduce copy input mistakes and discrepancies.

At its simplest, the integration between ECN’s service and the LandmarkOSI is designed to accelerate workflows between media placement and airtime. It will help to simplify commercial scheduling and reduce make-goods due to programming errors, the company said.

Other features within the newest version of Landmark OSI include programmatic API, which allows users to participate in proposals and sales with programmatic exchanges; an integrated Internet contract feature, which allows users to manage Internet advertising and linear TV advertising in a single system; and an analytics feature that integrates data from LandmarkOSI and other operational data to help improve forecasting, pricing and sales activities.

STREAMLINING SALES
SintecMedia, an Israeli-based provider of media business solutions, has an eye on the sales side of things and plans to introduce at the IBC Show, OnBoard, a TV sales-side platform designed to improve digital and programmatic advertising. OnBoard is an open API system that connects with both linear and digital platforms for either direct or programmatic buying and selling. The solution works to streamline the sales process by managing inventory offering, pricing and order confirmation, as well as providing post air analysis, according to Geoff Nagel, vice president of go-to-market strategy in North America.

From a single storefront, users can sell across any digital channel whether it’s programmatic or direct sales, Nagel said. “It’s evolutionary in that it doesn’t make you choose certain paths over any other,” he said. Stations can start simply and have a local sales team sell across linear and digital properties, or use OnBoard’s private marketplace functionality to sell premium inventory programmatically. “It’s that flexibility and evolutionary approach that’s working for customers,” he said. “We’re trying to help sellers reach more buyers.”

The company also is revealing advances in its core product OnAir, which coordinates departments and business teams using a common database; and IBMS, which has a new Promo Optimization feature that gives users more control over the promo process with a customizable promo placement engine. The company also recently introduced cloud versions of both systems.

Imagine Communications recently introduced a new feature within the LandmarkOSI traffic and billing system that can electronically receive and ingest commercial instructions using the SMPTE Broadcast eXchange Format (BXF) 3.0.THE PROMISE OF PROGRAMMATIC
One of the biggest trends in the market is the purchasing of advertising through programmatic means, which Google defines as “a technology-automated and data-driven method of buying and delivering ads against TV content.” Recent reports estimate that 4 percent of TV ads will be purchased through programmatic means in 2015, growing to 17 percent ($10 billion) by 2018.

That integration—with programmatic at the heart of it—is the future of business management, accoding to Brian Burdick, executive vice president of digital and programmatic for WideOrbit, a San Francisco-based provider of media automation and business systems technology. For stations that have not yet adopted a programmatic-type solution, there are risks to consider. “The risks are that they might lose out on revenue opportunities, and fall behind the knowledge curve of a practice that is [the industry’s] future,” he said. “For companies in broadcast, providing a converged solution for them to manage their programs—whether it’s broadcast or digital—is the way to move forward.”

That issue—one of integration—is a priority for WideOrbit. The company’s WO Programmatic TV system was developed to integrate with a user’s traffic system, whereby traffic, creative and credit information from WO Programmatic TV arrives with every offer. The system is integrated with the company’s WO Traffic, meaning that broadcasters can receive offers for spots directly within their traffic systems, and an order slides directly into existing approval and billing workflows.

The system follows a typical process of buyers placing orders for spots, followed by stations seeing a price, an advertiser and the creative spot. A so-called “heat map” can tell a buyer whether the price is higher than they usually get for the spot in question, and then a station can accept or reject the offer by analyzing the information that comes along with the sale—such as comparisons to current rates, community standards or potential conflict with other sales channels.

The system is also attractive to ad buyers, Burdick said, because the company’s installed base has access to a large footprint of local broadcasters. At its heart, the system makes it easier to buy spot and local TV by automating processes, as well as allowing advertisers and agencies to bring their own data and customer analytics to identify valuable audiences.

TAKING THE PULSE
Along with programmatic solutions, the demand for improved workflows is a market-wide priority. But with so much bantering around of this “w” word, what does workflow actually mean?

“The term means so many different things to each and every facility,” said Greg Dolan, COO of Xytech Systems, a Mission Hills, Calif.-based provider of facility management software tools. “From media manufacturing decisions, budget milestones, signal path creation, rostering, equipment rental, asset management, and on and on, the workflows just pile up. Each one is crucial and each one must be managed and tracked in a configurable, transparent manner.”

That’s a component of the company’s Media Pulse solution, which has the ability to tie all of these workflows across the entire spectrum into a cohesive system, he said.

The newest version of the platform-agnostic Media Pulse addresses production, broadcasting, media services and transmission. For broadcasters, the system addresses scheduling, resource management and content management, allowing elements within the video transmission chain to be managed. On the production side, the system can manage financial information, personnel, technical resources and media assets.

Likewise, managing and scheduling media assets is the primary goal of the Louise business management system from Pro-consultant Informatique, a French-based provider of media business management software. Working in conjunction with traffic, sales and billing solutions, Louise can manage assets across linear and nonlinear platforms.