Our interest in the story was triggered by the announcement of the Origin Digital acquisition. We interviewed Origin Digital’s CEO Darcy Lorincz last year at Digital Hollywood and learned a bit about their efforts to automate the value chain.

Richard describes the new offering in Digital Podcast 49.

This is a new line of business for Accenture that complements their professional services business. With Digital Media Services, Accenture is working to provide an end to end solution for the value chain. The services cover five key areas. Asset management, transcoding to new formats, distribution of the content, commercial intelligence and digital rights management are all parts of the value chain. Accenture’s current offering covers the first three areas.

They see the market as being a potentially $1 billion addressable market and the current providers are highly fragmented. Richard says that the major media companies are looking for people who can bring both market expertise, global reach and secure financial backing.

Richard describes the benefits of the service being reduced investment costs, reduced complexity, reduced operating expenses and faster time to market.

The entrance of major players like Accenture into the automation of the digital supply chain is indicative of the increasing maturity of the digital media business and the exciting opportunities to bring supply chain thinking and technology to maximize the opportunity of digital media.

If you are interested in the real operations behind the digital media business this is a podcast worth listening to. In two to three years, these types of services have the ability to become the backbone of digital media as it grows into a significant business.

[tags]digital supply chain, Accenture[/tags]