Digistor Announces Major Projects Team
Australian post and broadcast systems integrator Digistor has formed a Major Projects Team to handle complex and large-scale implementations.
“We have been handling major client work for over 20 years, but today’s projects are much more complex,” said Digistor’s Managing Director Andrew Mooney. “In response to this we’ve formed a dedicated Major Projects Team to focus the relevant experience and appropriate resources to be able to successfully deliver client projects.”
The Digistor Major Projects Team is tasked with managing projects including large, multi-seat facilities, multi-location implementations, complex and high-volume media content management applications, and government/corporate upgrades and roll-outs. These projects typically involve considerable budgets and require detailed analysis and documentation, planned strategic implementation, human resource management and on-going support services.
“It’s critical our customers feel confident that we have the required resources and they are not just talking to sales reps. They now have access to our pre-sales planning, implementation, delivery and support team members throughout the lifecycle of the project to ensure its ongoing success.”
The Major Projects Team, above, is headed by senior sales consultant Matt Wood, pre-sales solutions architect Patrick Trivuncevic, and service delivery manager Jordan Tiburcio. Other company resources from the Services team are called into play as required.
Recent Projects
Recently completed projects have included the deployment of new edit facilities and the training of staff for a major broadcaster across multiple states. The team also developed an in-house VFX, editorial and finishing facility for a multi-national advertising agency. Other projects have involved designing and implementing an automated, tiered workflow and storage system for a non-traditional broadcaster servicing multiple departments, and implementing a new MAM system for a government department.
Because customers often ask for different options to compare functionality and price, the team’s varied experience in media and entertainment helps in the project design phase to step through proposed systems and compare how these could meet their business requirements.
Cloud-based applications and operations are increasingly proving advantageous for many workflows with numerous options to investigate and choose from. The cloud can be used in workflows purely for file transfers or as a collaborative server where everyone is working from a central hub. Clients can implement their own private cloud, use a mid-tier local telco or one of the large-scale multinationals.
Andrew noted that content creators also need to understand the fine-print to ensure they know what is happening to their data. In many cases content licensing requires strict security and data sovereignty that can involve many legal issues if not initially addressed and planned.
New Digital Media Players
Digistor also finds that new kinds of corporate customers need to manage digital media as a part of increasingly complex projects. Andrew said, “As well as traditional broadcasters, we are now working with telcos, banks, advertising agencies and corporate entities that have high-end digital media requirements. Accordingly, these projects involve more legal compliance so it makes a lot of sense to keep everyone involved throughout a project.” This change has called for a more formal management process, with a more structured approach.
Digistor’s Major Projects Team handles customer expectations through detailed pre-sales planning processes where client needs are quickly identified and specifications are defined. In this way, everyone involved in the project understands what is involved as the actions, responsibilities and schedules are set out at the beginning.
“Companies approaching us for project work range from those without any in-house expertise to those that have employed a core team of specialised people within their organisation. Either way, they need to feel comfortable with what we are supplying for the lifecycle of project,” said Andrew. “Today it’s all about their workflows - so rather than simply supplying products we deliver integrated systems. The complexity arises because of the way all parts of a system connect and ‘talk’ to each other. A prime example is asset management,which has become increasingly important but there are many products in that field to choose from. We analyse the requirements and define upfront what is the most suitable so everyone is comfortable with it before deployment starts.”
The scale of work relates the specific equipment configuration, setup and options. It can also involve custom coding or scripting to integrate new hardware with existing legacy systems. It is important to ensure clients understand the complex nature of this type of work because projects can spiral out of control if the implications of integrating with existing infrastructure and workflows aren’t taken into account.
Other topics customers may not have considered that Digistor can advise on include data migration, security, disaster recovery and business continuity, support and training, all of which make setup, maintenance and future-proofing of operations more successful.
The Major Projects Team also works with product vendors and suppliers that can serve as technical partners during initial design and certification processes.
“Vendors often don’t have the capacity to deal directly with customers so they engage with Digistor to provide product knowledge to suit each project. In this way, we can integrate the best products tailored for each workflow,” Andrew said. www.digistor.com.au
