Efficiency, lower costs and increased productivity are imperatives of all industries. It is impossible to enter any business without taking into account those factors. The market for the production, broadcast and post-production of audiovisual materials is no stranger to this rule.
The automation of processes through computer applications has been one of the ways used by companies to achieve these goals. Thus, almost infinite management applications were popularized, both for general purposes (the so-called ERP, Enterprise Resource Planning, business resource planning), and oriented to particular industries.
In the case of the world of video and television, some specific applications appeared, such as those provided by Entertainment Partners, Movie Magic (whose applications related to this segment were acquired by the previous one in August 2002) or VizuAll. These specialized software products place a strong emphasis on everything related to building budgets for productions and planning resources.
The first of the companies mentioned has its focus on budgeting, with products such as EP Budgeting (for the construction of budgets for projects), EP Vista (for the accounting of production costs) or EP VPO (Virtual Production Office, virtual production office, for the administration of the large number of documents generated by each project, among which are memos, budget reports or scripts). The company also markets Movie Magic Budgeting (similar to the Budgeting EP) and Movie Magic Scheduling (to schedule activities).
VizuAll, on the other hand, is more planning-oriented, offering solutions such as ScheduALL (a resource planning software to increase cost control and the use of available resources), ScheduLINK (specific for transmission and satellite operations) and NewsPLAN (for planning the resources of a newsroom).
The particular versus the general
In most companies in the segment based in Latin America, one of these two phenomena occurs. Either they have not implemented a management software at all, or they have opted for a general purpose one, either acquired or developed internally.
"There are many functionalities that generic software products cannot satisfy," says Germán De Perasanz, president of DPS, an Argentine software developer that has specialized in the attention of advertising agencies and that serves clients in the video editing and post-production market. like Metrovisión. To exemplify, the manager indicates that the budgeting of films is a process that needs a special computer tool.
"We have a lot of customers who come to us after trying to develop their own system or using a generic management product, because they notice that a specialized product can give them much better results," says Rick Richardson, marketing director of VizuAll, which has clients in the region like GloboSat in Brazil. HBO Ole in Venezuela and the Catholic University of Chile. According to Richardson, the differential value of its products lies in the fact that "ScheduALL was designed by people who are in the video business and who understand perfectly the needs of this market".
General-purpose products have, however, their proponents. "Thanks to the process- and event-oriented architecture, you get a very great flexibility to meet specific needs through parameterization," explains Alberto Morelli, director of BDO Consulting, one of the main implementers of SAP management software for small and medium-sized companies. "The main thing is not in the software itself, but in the support that the implementer can give to the company to understand its specific requirements and conceive the specific processes that satisfy them."
According to Morelli, this software is parameterizable to meet the specific requirements of virtually any industry. In the event that it is not possible, the consultant develops the necessary tools to cover them and integrates them with the SAP.
Ideas del Sur, one of Argentina's leading television production companies owned by Marcelo Tinelli, decided on Sistemas Bejerman, a local developer of generic management software, for its management systems. They implemented the modules of Sales and Accounts Receivable, Purchases and Accounts Receivable, Finance, Business Intelligence, Accounting and Tax Management and Salaries and Wages. "It was not necessary to integrate other specific software, since, in terms of management, we found that its process does not differ much from other service companies," says Enzo Puma, marketing manager of Bejerman Systems.
Currently, the production company is implementing, with the same provider, a Document Management system, with the aim of digitizing all the information and dispensing with the use of papers.
The path of integration
For Richardson, the main competition for specialized management systems in the video segment is not generic software, but the technology departments of companies that intend to build an in-house development. "Only a few of them succeed, while most end up turning to an alternative like ours," concludes the executive.
It is a common case that the production company goes to the market to look for a software, does the tracking only among those of general purposes and finds that none exactly satisfies what they need. Then, studying the specific ones for their segment, they notice that they can be weak in the accounting or legal aspects. This generates a kind of disappointment that moves the information technology sectors to try to build their own system.
But, in reality, there is a simpler alternative: integration. This means, the use of a general purpose management software to attack the administrative and accounting part, the use of a punctual one for the video segment for budgeting and planning and, through interfaces, to get information passed between them.
Both EP products, as well as those of ScheduALL or Movie Magic have the ability to integrate with software on the market. Similarly, most ERP products can build interfaces with other applications (except for some that are very SMB-oriented or were developed by independent programmers).
This is the scheme used by DPS in Metrovisión: "we solved the specific needs that existed to reserve the post-production rooms with our software, but the accounting part is solved by another application, which receives information from ours to complete its work," says Perasanz.
For those just starting out
Not all production or post-production houses are in the same computerization situation. "We have customers who have a very sophisticated system architecture and others who do not have any degree of automation," says Richardson, who also explains that, according to the needs, "We can participate in the process of fully implementing the solution or just send them the product and have them handle them on their own." The executive emphasizes that a large station has a level of information technology structure that cannot be found in a girl, in a video production company or in a post-production company.
Basically, the specific functionalities provided by the segment-specific products in the planning area include a calendar that allows you to see at once all the resources that are assigned and when they will be available, to make the most of the time of use. In this way, conflicts due to overoccupation or underemployment of personnel, equipment and work areas are avoided. This information can be shared by everyone involved in the production process.
Metrovisión has 25 editing rooms. With DPS software, what is done is to occupy, according to reservation shifts, each of them. That information goes to a visual grid that allows you to discover at a glance which rooms are occupied, for how long and who occupies them. As mentioned, all that information then goes to the company's multi-purpose management system, so that customers can be billed for usage time.
It also allows you to plan the application of a resource automatically to a task that is repeated regularly over time. This reduces the administrative burden on that computer.
Budgeting products, on the other hand, allow costs to be assigned to each resource involved in a project, based on market data, previous projects and generic values. They also handle detours (from how much to how much a project can cost).
It is seen, then, that if a company wants to save time and money and increase the use of its resources, it must invest time and money in looking for the software alternative that best suits its needs.
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