OPINION AND ANALYSIS
Beyond turnkey – enter the era of internet-inspired evolution By Colin Zhao, VP product management, design and strategic partnerships, NAGRA
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here’s no denying that the blurring of lines between the world of internet content distribution and traditional pay-TV has resulted in both threats and opportunities for our industry. As we consider buzz words like OTT, skinny bundling, Android TV and apps, it is important to understand the trend at the core of this disruption – the fact that the internet brings with it an ethos of continuous improvements that relies on a continual flow of new technologies. Rapidly evolving internet players have enjoyed a significant head start over traditional pay-TV operators in recent years, and now it’s time that pay-TV caught up. The likes of advanced metadata, voice recognition technology, dynamic pricing models, responsive content and more are readily available through a multitude of tried and tested web services and technology stacks. Pay-TV operators would benefit from harnessing these technologies to drive a better user experience and increased monetisation. This model is dramatically different from the turnkey model, where a system integrator takes a multitude of components at a specific point in time, glues them together, and then allows their customers to turn the proverbial key to start their brand-new system. Unfortunately, by the time the turnkey solution is built and deployed, technology and user behaviour have often evolved, making the solution slightly outdated the moment it is out of the door! As consumer offerings like mobile phones continually raise the UX bar, users are increasingly expecting a personalised experience based on their tastes, viewing habits and a frictionless navigational paradigm. This can only be achieved through a programme of continuous UX improvement based on a tight user feedback loop.
So, what should be done? Operators need to keep a close tab on the myriad technologies that are being launched, develop a sufficient understanding of these technologies, and use their expertise in pay-TV to evaluate if, and how, each of these should be integrated into their product offerings. They then need to ensure that licensing contracts are executed, and the features are implemented across the multiple service delivery systems. Finally, new UX journeys need to be built, and the whole system needs to be tested end-to-end. Going through this cycle again and again as new technologies mature is a complex task for most operators. As the rate of technological innovation increases, this complexity proportionately increases. How can this be sustainably accomplished? For the largest operators, this would involve a reorientation of their existing product development teams to cope with this inflow of new technology in an agile manner. However, for most operators, this effort would be slightly overwhelming. A good solution for these operators would be to choose a partner that has a roadmap that proactively integrates relevant internet technologies throughout a productised solution. Having a productised solution is key to ensuring agility (the speed at which new features are deployed in market), reliability (the ability to continually test the endto-end system for bugs) and a great UX that benefits from a tight feedback loop based on user interactions. These three dimensions work hand-in-hand to improve NPS (net promoter score), ARPU/monetisation and operational efficiency for the pay-TV operator. This is what I call internet-inspired evolution with a pay-TV lens. In order to stay relevant by meeting consumer demand for new services and experiences, our industry must collectively embrace internet-inspired evolution. n
10 | TVBE JANUARY 2018
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