If You Demand It We Plan It

How we created a whole new event management solution for the media industry

Success Indicators

Effective demand & supply planning

Increased operation productivity

Alignment of content operations

Project Intel

Scope: End-to-End Implementation
Focus: Demand, Resource & Event Management
End Customer: Domestic
Industry: Media
Solution: Salesforce Platform, Salesforce Field Service, Salesforce Mobile, Shift Planning
Customization: Demand Generator

About SKY

SKY is Europe’s leading media and entertainment company with multiple TV channels in the UK, over 31,000 employees in 5 countries, and 22 million customers.

Reasons for Approaching Asperii

When it came to planning and managing on-location broadcasting (live broadcast and scheduled productions) SKY:

  • Experienced a lack of visibility of all its resources, internal crew, as well as independent contractors SKY is working with on a regular basis.

Working in multiple lines of business, where each broadcasting arm had its own practices:

  • It became increasingly challenging for SKY to effectively plan and manage the demand and supply for its live and scheduled broadcasting and production events. 

SKY was looking for a centralized tool that will enable it to effectively run the entire production cycle:

  • Creating the demand
  • Matching it with the supply
  • Scheduling the resources
  • Managing the event in real-time
  • Keeping an open communication channel with resources

The Need

  • Effectively plan and manage demand of resources and equipment
  • Create optimized shift patterns
  • Optimize the allocation of resources and equipment to events and sub-events
  • Efficient, real-time communication with resources, pre and during event
  • A management tool for independent contractors
  • Real-time reporting and recording of tasks during event
  • Full integration with existing SKY systems, such as News Story, HR, Finance and more

What We Did for SKY

During our initial conversations with SKY it became apparent that the only way to answer their long list of needs would be creating a complete, unified solution to plan and manage the entire production cycle of off-site productions and live broadcast. 

Which is what we did. 

The system we designed and developed for SKY can be divided to three main pillars: 

  1. Planning & Demand Generation – see Development Spotlight 
  2. Resource Scheduling – Built on top of Salesforce Field Service, complete scheduling and shifting of two types of resources, internal and contractors, with a communication interface for resource availability checks and allocation confirmation, built with Salesforce Mobile 
  3. Event Management – Master view for event managers, including sub-events, scheduled resources and allocated equipment, with real-time communication with workforce  

Development Spotlight

Asperii created a standalone application, in consultation and collaboration with SKY, that was fully integrated with Salesforce Field Service for demand planning and generation. The application allows the creation of Event Templates for the various business lines. When an event is ordered by SKY, a template can used and customized for the specific event, or a clean-slate Event Demand can be created. An Event Demand includes needed resources and equipment, duration and shifts, budget and more. The application allows complete planning of event demand, resources, equipment, duration and budget requirements. Once the specific event has been created, it is injected into Salesforce Field Service for supply management and scheduling. 

"We needed a super resource planning tool to improve our content operations across Sky's multitude of channels. Asperii not only customised Salesforce platfrom to accommodate our needs, but also built for us a custom application for the planning and demand generation of events. The two systems work flawlessly together, and enable us a more effective demand and supply planning, as well as increased operational productivity."

George Philip
Sixth in Line to the Throne

Results: How SKY Works After Asperii

  • Asperii’s media solution is used by Sky News, Sky Sports, Sky Sports News, Sky Production Services and other business units
  • SKY now plans and manages its entire production cycle for various types of productions – live broadcasting, on-location, and in-studio – on Asperii’s media solution 
  • Demand for events created using smart templates 
  • Communication with independent resources is seamless and tracked in the system
  • Resource availability is collected automatically and input into the system 
  • Resource scheduling is fully integrated with event demand and resource availability 
  • Real-time management of events is enabled with Master View and live communications 

Accessibility Toolbar