At Peak Signal, many of our consultancy assignments have been helping major broadcasters design and build their cloud media supply chains. One of the things we have noticed is, once the supply chains are up and running, the volume of data that is generated makes it very difficult to pinpoint where performance might not be as you expect or where there are unexpected costs being generated. With millions of rows of complex and inter-related data, traditional spreadsheet-based working simply cannot handle the volume, while supply chain tools didn’t always understand the customer specific configuration reporting requirements and enterprise BI toolsets added large costs for which would likely outweigh the benefits.
We are fortunate to have built close relationships with our customers which enables us to gather real requirements. We launched a proof of concept with our long-term partner, Hearst Networks to further refine the requirements. Using the input from Hearst Networks, we were able to design a lightweight, configurable and highly cost-effective analytics platform that turns supply chain data into clear, actionable business insights.
Hearst Networks invested in designing and implementing a highly automated and configurable cloud content supply chain. Moving to the cloud gave them huge benefits, but they were aware it would also change their costs from predictable annual budgets to dynamic, usage-based fees. They therefore spent time identifying their predicted total cost of ownership for the types of content volumes they processed at the outset of implementing the supply chain.
Now the supply chain has been running for a while, Hearst Networks wanted to look beyond the headline numbers and identify how they could deep dive into the information and optimise further. However, there were hurdles to overcome with the analysis tools available to them:
To solve these challenges, we designed our Media Supply Chain Analytics Platform to ensure it could be configured to suit a customer’s operation. We set it up to match the configuration of Hearst’s supply chain such that it aggregates complex technical data behind the scenes and presents it in a clear, intuitive dashboard designed specifically for media teams.
The implementation of the reporting platform for Hearst Networks immediately proved its worth by surfacing significant, quantifiable savings and reclaiming hours of administrative time. Some of the supply chain activities made visible included identifying potentially redundant QC cycles and unexpected activation costs. Additionally, the platform includes a report builder which enables finance and operations teams to create the reports they need and set them to be generated and emailed automatically as emails, or as polished PDFs to stakeholders on a regular schedule.
We also previewed conversational AI access on the roadmap. Rather than building a bespoke assistant, we exposed reporting-data through a secure MCP server that Hearst’s own AI clients can call. With a local or enterprise model that keeps sensitive Hearst data private, team members can ask simple questions in plain English and get instant answers as text and charts:
By partnering with Peak Signal, Hearst Networks successfully bridged the gap between complex engineering workflows and real-world commercial goals. At a fraction of the cost of generic enterprise systems, they unlocked deep operational visibility, automated hours of reporting, and maintain a firm hand on the tiller of their cloud supply chain budgets.
“Before using Peak Signal’s platform, our supply chain data was too big to actually use, while we could see one month at a time, we couldn’t track the trends across months or years that would tell us what was really going on. Now we can look back across the whole history of our supply chain, spot patterns we'd never have found manually, and act on them. That's the real shift, we’ve gone from a huge amount of data, to insight we can use.”
Jan-Hendrik HeinHearst Networks EMEA
“Our goal was never 'to build another dashboard,' it was to help our customers actually see their supply chain. By working closely with Hearst, we built something lightweight enough to configure fast and smart enough to identify supply chain anomalies and optimisation opportunities, at a fraction of the cost of enterprise tools so that customers quickly recoup its costs, many times over in the savings it identifies.”
Julian ShuttPeak Signal
