Visualizing data makes approachable analytics much easier

Sony Pictures Networks uses SAS Visual Analytics to get up-to-date visibility of key performance metrics for decision-making

Committed to its strong consumer-focus and innovative spirit, Sony Pictures Networks turned to SAS Visual Analytics for its content framework and audience analytics.

Sony Pictures Networks India (SPN), India’s leading media conglomerate owns and operates multiple independent brands under its portfolio. The network comprises 31 entertainment channels across genres and languages, a digital VOD platform, a film production division and a distribution arm through which content is distributed across multiple content delivery platforms. In India the network reaches out to over 700 million viewers and is available in 167 countries. With such a complex content distribution network coupled with high volumes of transactional data accumulating by the day, it was imminent to create multi-level visibility across genres, languages and delivery platforms to empower managers for data-driven decision making.

With SAS Visual Statistics, the channel research and analytics team can run predictive models on an ad hoc basis to analyze the content performance which gives directional inputs for decision making of content recruitment. The team have up-to-the-day visibility of latest insights based on refreshed data, which enables them to make nimble decisions swiftly and confidently.

Transforming data into insights

With large hours of content on hand to choose from, Sony Pictures Networks needed to ensure that the right kind of content is selected for on-air, basis the data and right kind of modelling around the data. This is important to provide a better viewer experience and to retain the target viewers on to the channel. To make sense of the enormous amount of unique and varied data at its disposal, Sony Pictures turned to SAS for a way to make wise decisions quickly on the current trending patterns.

Ensuring data quality

Effective data manipulations were built in backend ETL tool, with necessary exceptional business logics and scenarios designed in the process to harmonize data coming from varied transactional sources.

Utmost faith in the quality of the data enabled Sony Pictures to make quick informed decisions and outpace the market.

SAS Visual Analytics/Statistics helps Sony Pictures reinforce that faith with confidence. With exhaustive data manipulations and business logics built in the solution, combined with an appealing interface, business analysts can focus more on fetching answers rather than validating business scenarios.

Collaborative Visualizations

With SAS Visual Analytics, business analysts have the freedom to dissect their data and run their own analysis and discovery without requiring extensive IT support. They can generate and share their own reports, dashboards and visualizations simply by clicking or drilling into items of interest.

For example, senior management can use the existing dashboards to drive data based business/team reviews. Capability is also provided to extract these reports for easy reference as required.

With compelling visualizations and easy drill-down capabilities, business users can quickly decipher meaning of the data and make informed decisions. Media Content KPIs like ‘Television/Gross Viewership in Thousands’, ‘Reach’ and ‘Time-spent’ are crucial and are monitored more closely with a renewed focus. Predictive models of ‘Content Framework’ has led to a quick incorporation of programs along with actual vs. predictive KPIs based on automated / advanced-automated statistical calculations.

Having deployed SAS Visual Analytics & SAS Visual Statistics, the channel research team envisions to build on that foundation and gradually incorporate advanced sophistication of ‘what-if’ scenario and ‘goal-seeking’ analysis to address ad hoc simulative operational scenarios.