Fabric – Reinventing IFE Sales & Syndication with Fabric Connect
Andrew Holland, Director of Data Services, Fabric
A chasm has opened up in the in-Flight Entertainment industry – between the slick technology used by airline passengers, and the creaking legacy systems and processes that the IFE industry and their airline clients use for the process of sales and syndication.
The In Flight Entertainment experience has improved immeasurably for airline passengers. Seat-back touchscreens, massive catalogs of global content – Movies, Box-sets, TV channels, radio, music – available in multiple languages. Things have really moved on for the end-user. Gone are the days of everyone watching a grainy VHS from one overhead screen. There has been a relentless focus to deliver better content to passengers via smarter technology on the planes.
However, the same cannot be said for the systems and processes that are used behind the scenes. The inflight entertainment industry has one of the most complicated media supply chains in the world. The complexity begins first with hardware. For instance, most commercial aircraft fly for around 25 years, going through a retrofit every eight years, which means that IFE suppliers must try to support 25 years of audio and video formats, with hundreds of different metadata standards and seatback systems. And it only gets busier from here!
Added to the myriad versions required for all the various types of hardware, are the continuously evolving and updating content lists, which are all dependent on different rights in different territories. Combined with this, adding a layer of even more intricacy, are the huge localisation requirements: for in-flight entertainment assets and metadata to be available in a multitude of languages on different flight plans.
Given this level of complexity, it seems almost miraculous to learn that the existing paradigm of the IFE industry remains one of manual processes, i.e. countless spreadsheets, pdfs, word documents and phone calls, all requiring continuous updating from week to week as licensing deals change. Not only is this inefficient, but it is a business ecosystem riddled with the potential for task duplication, human error and risk.
Adopting a cloud-native digital supply chain would clearly bring enormous benefits and efficiencies to businesses in an industry that faces these challenges, helping to deliver the high standards of entertainment services that air passengers now expect as standard.
Resolving this complexity, and bringing harmony to the cacophony of information was the challenge that Fabric sought to overcome with the development of the ‘Connect’ platform – an elegant, cutting edge sales and syndication platform that allows clients to share collections of Fabric titles with their customers for preview, selection and review.
Fabric Connect – The Sales & Syndication platform purpose built for the IFE Industry.
Fabric Connect allows suppliers of In Flight Entertainment to manually or automatically create lineups and catalog sets to share with their airline clients, presenting their preview, sales and syndication titles through a beautiful and cutting-edge platform that has an intuitive consumer-facing styled interface. Connect dramatically simplifies the process of sharing content and maximizing the value of your catalog.
Clear information and attractive presentation are key to any sale. When the Media & Entertainment industry spends billions of dollars on high quality bespoke video, copy and imagery to market their content to consumers, it makes sense to utilize that material in a B2B context as well. The comparison between a dry spreadsheet and the rich media displayed in the Connect UI clearly represents a paradigm shift for Sales and Syndication.
Videos are an invaluable part of the monetisation process, and Connect allows for the inclusion of full-length screeners, trailers, supplemental content, promos and more, alongside the crucial selection of programme information that is relevant to sales – e.g. Origination, Synopsis, Ratings, Measurement, Language Availability and Rights.
How does it work?
The configuration of the Connect platform is managed through dedicated tabs and pages in the Fabric content metadata management platform. Clients can be assigned into User groups, with countries and rights platforms assigned to them, which allows bespoke Collections and Lineups of content to be shared with them. Inherent perpetual rights verification ensures the validity of lineups.
Customers are able to browse selections of media and group them into orders, or select them for review, budgeting, or further discussion. They will also be able to choose from Alternate Language Audio Tracks, Subtitles or to filter by distributor of rights platforms.
Fabric’s advanced supply chain integration even extends to the process of configuring ordering and delivery, enabling – where business allows – Fabric to take orders directly from Connect, validate against pre-set rules, and thus automate the instructions for scheduling and content delivery.
Why Change?
Connect creates an attractive piece of virtual real-estate for your business to monetize and market your entire media back catalog. Instead of focusing on squeezing every last drop from a tiny percentage of your titles, why not open up your entire back-catalog, beautifully displayed in a crisp new online shop-front, complete with all the promotional media, relevant box-office performance data, ratings and reviews, and language information that inform your customers and help to push sales over the line?
In all – this is a comprehensive game-changer in the field of media sales and syndication, that has been developed with the close feedback of our existing clients, over-delivering to create a best-in-class sales portal. Fabric is used by the World’s leading Film Studios, Platform Owners and Distributors including: Paramount Global, Amazon Studios, Sinclair Broadcast, MGM, Warner Bros. Discovery, HBO and Anuvu.
For a demonstration of Connect’s core functionality or to find out how Fabric could help transform your titles & metadata visit www.fabricdata.com.
