Media
Today, media and entertainment enterprises are navigating some of the biggest shifts ever witnessed in technology, culture, and business models — from adoption to preference, from fragmented audiences to convergent industries, from emerging economies to game-changing new players.
Embracing technology and business forces that create this shift will help tomorrow’s enterprises lead the 'digital evolution' and stay strong — creatively and financially.
Challenges and opportunities
Protecting intellectual property rights (IPR): Today's digital media ecosystems have created roadblocks in intellectual property management (IPM) and royalties: calculations and payments are more complex than ever. The result? Bottom-line disadvantages — which can be turned around with technology solutions that help safeguard, manage, and monetize assets.
Rise in consumption of digital media: From the earlier generation that wants to watch TV shows online, to the mature banker who likes his investment updates on his smartphone — content needs to be delivered on platforms that match the consumer's lifestyle. With increased pressure to deliver across multiple channels, enterprises with the right mix of relevant IT infrastructures and sustainable solutions — across the content supply chain — will ride the digital tide.
Consumer insight and understanding: With increased industry fragmentation and consumer maturity, today's trends could be tomorrow's mainstays. There's a thin line between redundant and relevant — which calls for powerful analytics to predict the 'where, what and why' of consumer needs. Analytics empower enterprises with business-impacting information about the right demographics and consumer behavior patterns to plan their strategies for increased profitability and market share.
Education
Virtual colleges: New technologies, coupled with changing attitudes and student profiles, have broken barriers to integrate everyone — from parents and faculty, to third-party information providers and regulators. Social media, instructional design, and collaborative platforms are just some of the ways to stay ahead in this learning revolution.
Student mobility: Higher education has gone global. So have students. As they pursue learning internationally, competing for their talent is creating new business models — increased acquisitions from private institutions, international partnerships, and the opening of overseas 'branch campuses'.
Satisfying the new 'avatar' of students: The expectations are endless. And justifiably so. In addition to demanding digital learning, students also expect institutions to round their skills and make them 'corporate-ready.’ Institutions that can provide this edge, and more, will get closer to keeping their classrooms full.
Increased regulation: The call for more accountability in terms of student success and employability is changing core institutional processes in student management, administration, and marketing. The need? New metrics and tracking mechanisms that can help demonstrate proof of 'value addition'.
Publishing
Digital transformation: Information is available anytime, anywhere – allowing consumers to access content at their convenience. This necessitates a change from print-centric editorial processes and systems, to an integrated view that is agnostic of delivery channels. With context-centric advertising also on the rise, there will be an all-pervasive change in content repositories, editorial team structures, advertising offerings, and customer data — compelling publishers to deliver products and services for new consumer needs.
Community engagement: Customers are no longer passive recipients of information — they are part of a social content ecosystem. Enterprises must engage and empower customers by deploying feature-rich social networking platforms.
Seamless delivery: Enterprises are witnessing a rapid rise in the popularity of mobile devices and search-engine-enabled content discovery — which have devalued delivery through portals. This makes it critical for content delivery platforms to be search-engine-optimal and seamlessly integrated with social tools. Also needed are delivery mechanisms that are not purpose-built to each channel — they must be open to expose content as a service, and flexible enough to integrate with tools and applications when they emerge.
New commerce: Once consumers make a purchase, they want content to be available through all their devices, and the channels they choose. Business models of the future necessitate disaggregation of content into the most modular components — that can be combined without restrictions into packages appropriate to product needs. Ensuring media neutrality in consumer experience requires commerce platforms that enable product teams to create flexible solutions addressing customer needs across delivery channels, and to provide seamless recognition of revenues based on consumption patterns.
