Greg Dolan is COO of Xytech (www.xytechsystems.com), the Chatsworth, CA-based creator of the MediaPulse facility management platform. Here, he discusses how companies like his stay relevant in a niche space.
For several years, a number of trends have continued to challenge our clients, ranging across the media spectrum in post, studio and remote production, media services, broadcast operations and video transmission. Each of these sectors continues to face an ever-increasing velocity of content, partnered with pressure on margins. In short, we’re making and showing more content on all kinds of platforms but budgets aren’t increasing at the same rate.
Our approach is to address these challenges by providing a single management solution for all the operations our clients manage. These operational details must drive automation throughout their facilities and be a completely configurable tool delivering a custom solution to any user on any device with an Internet connection, regardless of location. The obvious solution is to be more efficient than the competition. When we provide these tools to our clients, everyone wins.
Staying relevant in such a niche space isn’t easy. Xytech has become the largest provider of facility management software by diligently following a very specific strategy. Our product, MediaPulse, represents our commitment to constant innovation. We have created a platform intended to evolve as technology changes. The idea is to service this industry with nimble, adaptive solutions and new features regularly. Our clients’ clients demand this of them and it would be an insult to not respond in kind.
In 2017, we have a wildly exciting series of product debuts focused on three areas: interoperability, transmission and mobility. Keep in mind this is in addition to over 300 new features we introduce each year.
Whether we’re automating accounting entries, transcoders, nailing up circuits, or provisioning assets, connectivity to other systems is a must. For most of my career, I could comfortably say the only people who enjoyed the experience of integrating systems were those needing professional help and a hug. We have made that experience considerably easier. Every feature in MediaPulse is specifically designed to work with the MediaPulse Integration Platform. The platform allows MediaPulse to speak with other systems in their native formats and is configured on the fly. This reduces time and costs dramatically.
Our Web interface, Sky, is now mobility compliant. Smart phones and tablets have their own interface including MediaPulse Analytic Dashboards, bringing all the power of MediaPulse right into our client’s pockets.
Finally, we recently created a broadcast services division to specially target the transmission business. Instead of looking at the business as some sort of island, we treat it as a vital component of all our client’s businesses and have a completely integrated and scalable approach. Combining our commitment to R&D and our need to be the best at everything we do, our clients and legacy systems will see MediaPulse Transmission raise their games.