Technology should never be an end in itself. Within broadcast operations the challenge is always to adopt the most appropriate technologies in the optimum combination to affect change management throughout the entire operations in a controlled and strategic way.   At Dalet, we see how Media Asset Management (MAM) technology can enable change management across a broad range of different broadcast operations. Moving to a file-based workflow, where the production team has absolute control over all its assets from their desktop, brings numerous advantages compared with traditional working routines. There are many different areas in which MAM can drive change, but let’s highlight a few.   1 – Unified editorial approach With an appropriate MAM system, it is possible to unify numerous channels under a single editorial management and planning layer. This unified editorial approach enables staff to handle all ingest and acquisition, and logging and documentation for outside broadcasts and field reports, plus news agency feeds, live studio presentations and third-party recorded materials received.   2 – Optimization through federation With MAM technology, broadcasters can reorganize and optimize operations, and federate and better use their resources. A MAM platform is a key driver for change since it automates back office media and metadata processes, facilitates content distribution, fosters collaboration and unlocks a broadcaster’s archives by making the assets a living part of the production workflow. The MAM also expedites the integration of various systems and components.    3 – Increased speed and control whilst maintaining channel identity The MAM-driven workflow structure enables each channel within a broadcast station to get content to air fast while retaining its own brand identity. Bulletins are complied by channel content producers who select stories they need, then finish them according to channel-specific editorial and scheduling criteria – by perhaps altering the run length – and assigning it into the run order of the relevant bulletin before playout or distribution. The unified system offers much better control over content from story development to delivery.   4 – Empower your most valuable asset – your staff The ability to unify its news operations with a MAM system working on a single database gives broadcasters a tremendous advantage. When combined with appropriate desktop production tools, broadcasters can see immediate improvements and efficiencies in how its journalists build, broadcast and share their stories. With a suite of reporting tools designed to analyze system performance, producers and management are now able to better measure the return on their investment (ROI).   To illustrate these factors, let’s look at one broadcaster that has benefited significantly by adopting MAM technology. In 2010, Italy’s largest commercial broadcaster Mediaset (Gruppo Mediaset) embarked on a radical business transformation. The goal was to produce more content, faster, to more devices, with a future-proofed and scalable system agile in response to new business opportunities. In a matter of months, following deployment of Dalet’s MAM solution, Mediaset saw productivity increase by a factor of three and the amount of content it was able to broadcast multiplied ten times.   Mediaset chose to employ an Enterprise MAM, around which it would centralize and streamline its TV news operations into a file-based workflow. This single platform was designed to manage the broadcaster’s entire news organization, improving the production process and facilitating sharing, cataloguing and preparation of content for multiple outlets.  By federating resources and rationalizing production in this way, Mediaset was soon able to achieve its longer-term strategy, which was to launch an entirely new 24-hour news channel.    Its confidence in being better able to leverage content led directly to the launch of a 24/7 news channel and output to other new media platforms. At Mediaset, content production has grown three times and content distribution ten times in the period, even before the full incorporation of TG5 into the new MAM workflow, which is happening in 2014.   To learn more about Mediaset’s deployment of Dalet’s MAM solution, download the white paper here.   We’re tremendously proud of what we have achieved with our valued customer, Mediaset. If you would like to know how Dalet MAM systems can enable change management within your broadcast operations, then just contact us and we can start talking.