Picture this: Your streaming platform has been up and running for a couple of years, and things have been going well so far. Your audience has grown, and so has your content catalog. The future looks bright.
But as time goes by, you notice a couple of minor things that might not have come up before:
- A handful of customers have started inquiring about alternate payment methods, like Venmo or PayPal, which you don’t have in place yet.
- You’ve grown enough to catch the attention of major distributors, but one of the agreements is on hold because a distributor isn’t yet comfortable with your current DRM.
- Last month, you caught a news story about another platform expanding their reach by partnering with a dealer network, but your developers tell you that your current technology can’t support that type of integration at the moment.
- During last week’s live playoff broadcast, a couple of users in rural areas groused about how “fuzzy” the game looked.
These may seem like minor issues, but they may also be the first hints of some potentially major growing pains. Subscribers increasingly expect a wide variety of payment options. Major distributors demand robust DRM. The paths to the discovery of a new platform are constantly evolving. And viewers won’t settle for low-quality feeds anymore.
There’s a good chance you have outgrown the capabilities of your current technology.
Organizations who have been through similar situations will tell you – better to address these issues a year too early rather than a year too late. Wait too long and your growth is going to be stymied. Or worse yet, you might start losing viewers and subscribers. And we all know, it’s more expensive to get subscribers than it is to keep the subscribers.
Best-in-class video solution providers are prepared to help you scale your business as it grows. Here are the elements you should be looking for to ensure the video solution you choose is scalable.
There are four things to look for in a highly scalable video solution:
- Secure Technology: Look for proven global technology and studio-quality DRM. That means you’re always up and running, and distributors will have confidence in their partnership with you.
- Content Delivery Network: Make sure that your CDN can handle spikes in traffic and viewership. The last thing you want is audience complaints about long buffering times, fuzzy images, or (even worse) connection failures.
- Billing Management: You want to make it as easy as possible for your customers to pay you. Find a platform that will integrate with major payment gateways, and includes multi-currency support, currency conversion, & other financial support.
- Multi-Tenant Support: Partnering can be a great way to find new customers, so you’ll need a platform that can manage resellers, vouchers, distribution, and dealers/sub-dealers to grow your business & increase revenue generation.
Want to learn more? Click here to learn how Setplex delivers a global, scalable solution and see if we’re the right partner to meet your growing needs.