In the ever-evolving landscape of media, organizations are increasingly adopting centralized platforms, moving away from fragmented vendor ecosystems. This shift aims to significantly reduce hidden operational costs and break down departmental silos that often hinder content production and distribution workflows. Traditional media operations, characterized by numerous disconnected tools and systems, tend to create inefficiencies through redundant software licensing, constant context-switching, and coordination delays across departments. According to industry executives, these fragmented approaches lead to considerable hidden costs that only become apparent after implementing consolidated systems.
Kathleen Barrett, CEO of Backlight, notes that “The hidden costs of fragmented media tech stacks add up quickly: Teams lose hours each day searching for assets across disconnected platforms, switching between editing, storage, project management, and review tools, and managing version conflicts that stall production.” This highlights the time wasted on navigating disparate systems, which impacts overall productivity.
Fragmented systems often lead to operational bottlenecks due to the need for constant context-switching between tools and coordination lags between teams. Industry executives describe these workflows as inefficient relay processes where teams lack visibility into the progress of other departments. Nav Khangura, VP of sales and business development at TMT Insights, explains this inefficiency, stating, “In traditional media workflows, time is often lost to manual processes, disconnected tools, and constant context-switching between teams and platforms; like trying to run a relay race without knowing where the next runner is.”
To address these issues, media companies are increasingly implementing centralized platforms. These systems connect previously disparate tools and workflows while maintaining a unified source of information. Application programming interfaces (APIs) and automation play a crucial role in linking disconnected tools and processes. Aaron Kroger, director of product marketing and communications at Dalet, suggests, “To consolidate fragmented processes across departments or vendor systems, organizations should begin with a centralized, accessible platform that enables unified viewing and management. Building on that, integrations can connect disparate tools, workflows, and people while having a single source of truth ensures consistency and eliminates duplication.”
Organizations are also utilizing cloud-based architectures with unified interfaces to address coordination issues. This allows teams to manage multiple functions from a single platform, eliminating redundant data entry and reducing coordination requirements between departments. Khangura points out that “Moving to a cloud-based architecture with a single, centralized interface allows teams to manage ingest, QC, approvals, and delivery all in one place.”
Centralized platforms enable organizations to consolidate data management and eliminate conflicting workflows, leading to coherent strategies and faster responses to market changes. Lucas Bertrand, founder and CEO of Looper Insights, highlights this, saying, “Centralizing merchandising data into a single platform helps unify reporting and removes redundant or conflicting workflows across teams. This eliminates silos between marketing and platform partners. The result is a more coherent strategy and faster response to market shifts.”
The benefits of implementing centralized platforms are evident in the measurable improvements in operational efficiency and cost reduction reported by organizations. For example, the Philadelphia 76ers and New Jersey Devils reduced storage management costs by 34% while streamlining access to nearly 2 million assets after consolidating their media management systems. Similarly, Orange Prestations TV tripled graphic output while managing over 730,000 assets after consolidating their platform.
Further gains include 50% reductions in content curation effort and 60% workflow efficiency improvements through the elimination of duplicate systems and manual handoffs. Ivan Verbesselt, chief strategy and marketing officer at Mediagenix, emphasizes the financial impact: “ROI calculation for supply chain consolidation centers on three key areas: operational efficiency gains, revenue optimization, and risk mitigation. When you eliminate duplicate systems, manual handoffs, and data reconciliation across fragmented platforms, labor costs drop significantly while velocity increases.”
Furthermore, platform consolidation leads to revenue optimization through improved content utilization. Organizations have reported a 35% conversion improvement and increases in effective catalog size, which allows more content to generate revenue before license expiration. As Verbesselt notes, “A single source of truth eliminates costly rights violations, missed licensing opportunities, and write-offs from content that never gets properly monetized. The ROI compounds because each improvement amplifies the others.”
Platform consolidation provides a return on investment through various cost-reduction mechanisms, including the elimination of redundant software licenses, faster asset discovery, and reduced labor hours spent on file transfers and coordination tasks. Barrett summarizes this by stating, “Consolidating your media ecosystem isn’t just operationally cleaner — it delivers measurable ROI through reduced software spend, faster asset discovery with AI-enhanced metadata, and fewer labor hours spent on file transfers.”
Finally, organizations are moving to consolidated platforms to eliminate perpetual software licenses and underutilized infrastructure across their supply chains. Geoff Stedman, CMO at SDVI, explains, “Moving to a cloud-based architecture provides the opportunity to move away from perpetual software licenses and underutilized infrastructure for the media processing elements of a supply chain.” Media processing tools, such as video transcoding, audio processing, and subtitle modifications, can operate on on-demand or consumption-based models, avoiding long-term licensing commitments and ensuring appropriate resource provisioning.
In conclusion, consolidating fragmented tech stacks is a strategic approach to reducing operational costs, enhancing workflow efficiency, and improving interdepartmental coordination within media organizations.