To coincide with the release of the Media Management section of the 2021 MediaTech Outlook report, TVBEurope‘s James McKeown took to a now ubiquitous video conferencing platform to speak to Greg Dolan, chief operating officer of section partner Xytech.
Dolan discusses the themes he lays out in his contributions to the report, which include the company’s response to lockdown conditions, the impact on his business and that of Xytech’s customers, and the tech and trends sparking innovation in the marketplace.
“The first major challenge Xytech faced was to move our entire footprint to remote work,” he explains. “One thing we’ve practiced over and over is our worst-case scenario: losing access to our physical resources. We experienced this in March due to the pandemic. Making sure we were able to move to a completely remote footprint within 36 hours and coaching our staff through these changes was a huge task. This included the learning curve of monitoring how the various departments work together. We make extensive use of video conferencing as well as checking in on staff throughout the company.
“At the same time, we’re in the business of being at service for our customers. Our customers were going through the exact same things we were. We had to respond to new requirements, and we had to be on the balls of our feet and to respond quickly. We made decisions quickly and executed them efficiently. At Xytech, we were successful at this task.”
Looking to the future, Dolan pointed to cloud-enabled automation as a fundamental business capability for companies in the media space. “Getting everything automated is absolutely critical. Companies need to be as nimble as possible. Due to the pandemic, we can no longer predict where people are going to be when they are doing their work. Solutions must be cloud-enabled to operate on any device, in every browser,” he says.
“Additionally, handling complex management of circuit, crews and media manufacturing or improving staffing situations is where AI-driven algorithms and data analytics are absolutely revolutionary when coming up with really efficient solutions and really efficient modeling quickly and economically.”
The Media Management section of the report, brought to you in association with Xytech, is now available to download. More information about Xytech’s products, solutions, and services for media and entertainment businesses can be found at www.xytechsystems.com.
