Connections

For premium content providers, pay TV operators and telecommunications alike the pandemic has opened up all sorts of issues around how to successfully manage business and keep subscribers happy. It hasn’t been easy for technology providers either, with disruption and new challenges in supporting customers and operating platforms at full efficiency.

Navigating a way through these issues is the focus of a new white paper from pay TV and content protection services firm NAGRA, which offers up data that can help content companies make the right business actions during and after the crisis.

“Simply put, how can we build a resilient COVID-19 response?” the paper asks, as it looks at the complaints coming from subscribers (less customer service availability, bogged-down internet speeds) and challenges for legacy content players (massive drop in sports content, less spending among households).

“In this unique situation, decision-making is the main difficulty. One of the basic techniques in problem-solving and data science is to compare the new situation with previous ones,” the report reads. “In this case, which previous situation can I use as a reference?

“The answer is simply that there is no previous reference. The only solution is to build a new reference on the fly and extrapolate from it, or move forward by trial and error, and adapt strategies along the way. It all comes down to understanding the impact and duration of these abnormal circumstances, and the pace of the subsequent recovery.”

Management and marketing, business intelligence and data science teams are all flying blind, the report argues, with few reference points for a challenge like today’s, and badly needed forecasting models and workflow capabilities to mould business strategy, for everything from staffing plans to call centre management, customer retention and pricing, upselling and paywall decisions.

NAGRA’s report offers a few first steps: avoid all opinion-based assumptions and stick to the data to guide your next steps; mould your response and strategy around your industry specifically (what works in finance just won’t in M&E); and update and adapt your models frequently, instead of sticking to what’s comfortable.

“It is always easier to rely on available data when making decisions, even though they are of poor quality, rather than fight to get a dataset that, although it may be smaller, is more accurate,” the report reads. “The quality of your decision-making depends directly on data quality. Also, modelling your business across silos, with a deep understanding of the data, will help you detect signals – for example revealing behavioural changes and new opportunities – that you may otherwise miss.”

To download the NAGRA Insight report, click here.