I love baseball. I used to have a coach that always said, “Keep it Simple
Silly!” The same can be said in business.
While on a project in London for Discovery Channel, we found that
Discovery’s shows are pretty popular in Europe/Middle East/Africa. This
means a lot of money is spent translating them into numerous languages.
Every time a show was translated into a different language, a regional
Language House (in the target country) was hired to give the show an
authentic sound and feel. Not only did London have to ship the show on a
new physical tape to the Language House, but the Language House had to
ship back a new physical tape with the translation as well. After close
examination, we found that there was a potential $3MM per year savings if
we just cut out shipping physical tapes.
Briefly, here are the numbers.
. (SHIPPING COST X 2) + (Tape Cost X 2) = Equals Cost per Episode
. 15 Episodes Per Season on Average
. 20 Different Shows Per Single Network on Average
. 6 Different Networks (Animal Planet, Science Channel, Etc)
. 28 Different Languages
. $20 SHIPPING COST
. $10 TAPE COST
Our team recommended a video file transfer solution that would cost around
$500K to implement. No more tapes, no more shipping. We saved the
company 8.5 Million Dollars over a 3 year span, including the one-time
$500K technology investment.
In my 15 years as a consultant, I have found that sometimes the answer to
being more profitable is within your own walls. I liken it to the trade
deadline in baseball every July, where teams are scrambling to make a big
trade, but sometimes the answer is within their own organization.
For my project with Discovery Channel, the difference maker was within our
very own walls. As you can imagine, we hit a homerun…
