Media Conglomerates Look to Stay Agile with Consistent PPM Practices

 The world of media and communications is not as disparate and diverse as it may seem. Large media conglomerates account for a significant portion of the market, encompassing everything from television and music to film and theme parks. For example, Comcast, currently the world’s largest media conglomerate, offers internet and television services under its name, but it also owns smaller subsidiaries such as Universal Studios, NBC, Back Lot Music, and Fandango.

Saying that media enterprises operate in a competitive environment is an understatement. One percentage point of global industry sales can equal tens of billions of dollars. To attract new audiences and maintain current customers, these enterprises must pioneer new trails while maintaining enormous infrastructures. Both activities require unique skill sets, though, and human capital is expensive.

The enterprise that innovates first gains precious and valuable market share.

The Show Must Go On

Business affairs are typically handled independently within each subsidiary to simplify operations. These smaller companies must answer to their parent enterprise, but they conduct their own Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) to help achieve their specific, business-unit goals. The conglomerate is then left to piece together information to ensure that it is meeting its strategic objectives as a whole.

There is no time to analyze incomparable data in an industry that never sleeps. To ensure that objectives are being met, media and communication enterprises need to standardize PPM processes and metrics across every subsidiary.

Incorporating consistent best practices across each Project Management Office (PMO) helps with:

  • Supporting Strategic Initiatives – The right people must be available at the right time to keep the enterprise competitive. This means that the perfect balance must be found between innovating and maintaining.
  • Lowering Costs – Projects on both ends of the spectrum can be expensive, requiring resources with very specialized skill sets. To keep costs under control, the organization needs to optimize resources and automate operations wherever possible.
  • Providing Visibility into Projects – Decisions regarding portfolio alignment cannot be made in the dark. Conglomerates must be able to quantify results to make strategic judgments.

A Profitable Partnership

Projility understands the constant pressures that media and communication enterprises face. With a team of best-practice experts, Projility has led large organizations through complex PPM transitions for over a decade.

To help conglomerates that lack standardized PMOs, Projility implements PPM in the cloud via Microsoft’s comprehensive tool, Project Online. The cloud-based platform not only enhances collaboration across smaller subsidiaries; it provides enormous cost-saving benefits when compared to traditional, on-premises tools. Project Online requires no additional infrastructure investment and is available everywhere, 24/7.

Projility leverages Project Online’s power by incorporating its proprietary Business Intelligence (BI) and reporting solution, Hammerhead Platinum. This robust tool combines the best of Hammerhead BI and Hammerhead Projects, offering role-based dashboards, best-practice analytics, and a PPM data warehouse to accelerate PPM performance. The dynamic dashboards keep information fresh for end users, and a pre-built reporting library eliminates the need for clunky Excel-based reports.

Project Online with Hammerhead Platinum enables:

  • Prioritization – Hammerhead’s ranking algorithm keeps projects – and portfolios – aligned to the goals of the enterprise. It helps the conglomerate prioritize programs and projects, allowing them to manage both infrastructure-improvement and innovation initiatives in harmony.
  • Resource Management – Project Online with Hammerhead gives organizations the visibility into projects and pipelines they need to coordinate skill sets effectively and efficiently. The solution also automates workflows, making valuable resources available for other tasks.
  • Insight – Consistent practices lead to quantifiable results. By incorporating best practices and repeatable, standardized procedures, conglomerates gain insight across their entire portfolios. They can see what initiatives are working – and which ones aren’t.

The Power of Numbers

Media and communication conglomerates understand the power of information. To attract new audiences and preserve old ones in an ever-changing and volatile market, they must walk a fine line in their PPM. Projility appreciates this commitment and gives them the tools they need to prioritize projects, optimize resources, and gain insights needed to produce successful portfolio-wide results.

With the right PPM tools in hand, media and communication giants can be inherently agile – regardless of how big they get.

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Projility provides expert solutions for effective change. We offer enterprise portfolio and project management solutions based on Microsoft Project Server and Project Online, with tailored dashboard reporting, analytics, and decision-making tools via our Hammerhead technology. Projility also implements professional services automation systems established on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Project Service, and presents cloud-based strategies, migrations, and hosting solutions through Microsoft Azure. Contact us for more information.