Chapter 1
Post Production Pro: Time Recording and Job Management for Post-Production
So an hour later down here in beautiful Sussex, here I am getting started. At the same time, and this took another 3 hours, I have updated deskspace.com to focus on our Post Production Pro system, rather than the wide range of systems that we can deliver. Shepperton Studios have gone live with it now as our first customer for Post Production Pro so maybe it is time to start telling the rest of the UK Post Production Industry about Post Production Pro.
What is Post Production?
As an observer, having got to know the guys at Shepperton over the last 18 months since they first made contact, it seems that after a film or TV production has been shot and edited there is often a need to enhance and improve/add to the sound and/or the video or to dub dialogue into other languages. Without Post Production you probably don't get the perfect sound and picture you need to really hit the audience hard. In the UK there seem to be several hundred Post Production companies. It seems logical that as the general technical standard of Film & Video rises so Post work be more in demand, so it is an interesting market.
What did we do for Shepperton?
They do post sound work on an industrial scale. That means they have hundreds of jobs going through with different things being done to each. Their rates card is complex and working out the correct amount to charge for jobs, which depended on how much time was spent on a variety of different aspects of the job - related to an original budget - was not easy. Big clients these days in many sectors expect their suppliers of services to be able to provide transparency on how they come to charge what they charge. This was starting in legal, in the early 1990's, the way being led by US based clients. Hence the guys at Shepperton needed an effective system, which is what we built for them using our Deskspace D8 system development environment.
Why didn't they buy what their competitors were using?
I am not sure whether or not they know exactly what their competitors are using but they had tried having a system developed for them previously since the couple of possible existing systems that were around didn't do what they wanted. The normal thing, ie "here is our system, you must now work in a different way in order to use it". Then they had the same problem suffered by other people we have sorted out in the past with the system being developed for them. They found a void between what they were told their new system would do and what it actually delivered.
Given their experience, when we first met them they were understandably looking for reassurance that we could and would deliver what we said we would. So we put together a demo for them that showed much of what they wanted working before we asked them to sign a contract. That gave them the confidence to proceed.
They have told us that they will be happy to give us a public reference. Informally they have said Post Production Pro was well received by the team, that they were impressed by what we had delivered and that a client to whom they had shown it had commented that it was "easy on the eye" and were we available to do something for them?
A Question for you - in two parts
(1) Do you think that we should aim to deliver what our competitors do, or should we aim to create something better?
(2) What is the key determining factor in your mind when looking for new or replacement business software?
That's all for now.
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