Nature of Media Industry from ERP perspectiveRecent trends in Media industry and need for ERP ImplementationThe media industry is dynamic. In recent years, with increasing pace of change in information and digital technologies, media companies have evolved their business models and this has changed the traditional mode of the workflow and production management. The advent of digital media has brought innumerable difficulties to the media supply chain. These new delivery and content channels build up prominent challenges across asset and resource management for companies operating in media sector. Media companies which maintain inflexible or outdated business management systems may now find themselves striving to adjust to modern ways of running business. In order to achieve competitive advantage, media and entertainment companies should seek for ways to achieve economies of scale while retaining the ability to distinguish themselves through innovative services and products. Integrated business management systems designed for handle delivery, management and creation of digital content are crucial to achieve higher efficiency and enhancing collaboration, meeting customers expectations and gaining visibility. One of such software systems which provides solutions to media companies to gain competitive advantage and achieve sustainable growth is Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.Role of ERP in media industryTo stay competitive media companies need to evolve and innovate. To run better and win bigger ERP offers rich industry specific solution portfolio to maximize content revenues, attract and retain customers and reduce operating cost. The market leading business applications and analytics solutions including cloud, mobile and in memory technology to achieve the objectives faster, cheaper and better while distancing yourselves from the competitors. Regardless of whether you are a publisher, broadcaster, movie studio or advertiser, you need core business process to operate effectively. The processes include plan, produce, market, sell/distribute and analyze. This is shown in figure 1. The specifically designed ERP software and analytics solutions to help you optimize these processes on one platform enabling faster decision making and facilitating peak performance. Increasingly media is being consumed on mobile devices and media companies are run on mobile enterprises. From site based platform for developing mobile productivity apps to partner based solutions to enable mobile pricing and payment of digital services, ERP solution providers have positioned media companies to be at the forefront of this revolution. The shift to mobile combined with changing economics is driving media companies to look at on-demand offering to increase audience engagement and lower costs. ERP software also provide financial and human resources solutions that will scale easily as you grow into new business models and geographies. In memory technology enables to use massive amounts of data to conduct real time analytics, real time programming and enables managers take real time advertising decisions and delight the audience with high volume audience segmentation.

Figure 1: ERP and core business processes in Media industry

Enterprise Resource Planning system facilitates the integration of both external and internal processes within a company in order to run a successful business. The following benefots are achieved upon successful implementation of ERP in a media organization. Growth in subscriber database Effective business development Media sales team performance improvement Streamlining of billing processes Tracking performance of advertisements