Examine workflows
Feb 1, 2009 12:00 PM, By Chris Lennon
Implementing BXF can be advantageous for your organization's flow.
Again, before unleashing the sales force on all of these sources of revenue, it's important to consider the effects of booking more of these types of ads on other parts of the operation, such as traffic, playout and billing.
Scheduling
It all comes down to increased control over playout, which in itself can result in dramatic changes to the way scheduling is performed. When day-of-air changes are permitted, one must ensure that the extra work of initiating those changes is justified by the incremental revenue associated with those changes.
Simply making schedule changes is only the first step. You must also have the content in place and ready to play out for newly placed ads. BXF can help with content and content transfer functions, but it is important not to overlook this key requirement.
Playout
Does BXF mean that everyone related to old-style playout and automation is out of a job? Probably not, but it does mean that they will be able to focus on the most important aspect of their job — ensuring that the on-air product is of the highest quality.
As previously noted, although BXF enables increased automation of formerly manual processes, it can also complicate playout by placing increased demands on it. More frequent and complex schedule changes, along with the content movement and metadata demands implied by these, can put additional strain on the infrastructure and systems you use for playout. Be sure they're up to the task.
Ingest
Increased automation in the areas of content metadata exchange and the transfer of content itself results in more automated and accurate ingest of material. Again, does this mean reduced headcounts? Perhaps, but it also means freeing up people from mundane tasks such as ingest so that they can focus on more critical items that are directly connected to revenue.
Billing
Near real-time as-run information is not only a boon to sales, but also to billing. There's more to it than that, though. Benefits run the gamut from simpler reconciliation to more accurate billing and fewer discrepancies.
The most important thing to remember is that billing is downstream of almost every BXF-related workflow change you introduce within the organization. However, it's easily overlooked. There can be great advantages to billing as a result of using BXF, but there can also be trickle-down effects that complicate things at this level.
Conclusion
This overview is by no means a comprehensive analysis of the potential impacts of BXF on a typical organization. The intent is to get you thinking about exactly how this technology may impact your operation — both in good and bad ways.
The best way to get started is to consider an alternate meaning of the BXF acronym: Begin by examining flows. Remember, technologies such as BXF are great, and, if implemented thoughtfully with regard for their workflow impacts, they can be powerful. However, if simply put in place with a “let's see how this works” attitude, your results may not be what you hoped for.
Chris Lennon is director of integration and standards for Harris Broadcast Communications.
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