Overview
HCLTech automated processes for a global TV giant's content delivery channels, helping reduce manual effort for audio and caption validation by 70%
Our client, a prominent US-based premium television network, globally recognized for its groundbreaking content, sought to enhance asset accuracy and reduce time to market. They also aimed to standardize production and distribution platforms and processes.
However, the lack of real-time status updates and visibility into content assets posed a challenge. To address these needs, our client sought an ecosystem enabler with expertise in automating content creation and distribution systems across various channels.
After careful consideration of its global footprint and technological capabilities, the media giant selected HCLTech as its partner of choice to streamline its services and leverage our deep domain experience in content automation.
The Challenge
Intensive effort to complete test lifecycles with high accuracy
Our client faced a significant challenge in completing test lifecycles with high accuracy to support their expansion into the European market. They needed to release content on web and OTT platforms in multiple European languages across popular European browsers.
This presented several challenges:
- 6,000 assets had to be verified across various regions and four different platforms — and even with more than 30 QA professionals, each verification cycle took approximately one week; additional effort was required to fix defects and carry out retests
- A consolidated view of all operating modalities
- Verifying Cyrillic characters of some EU languages
Despite these challenges, HCLTech provided effective solutions to facilitate the completion of test lifecycles with high levels of accuracy, enabling the successful launch of content on European web and OTT platforms.
The Objective
Automate content to improve efficiency and customer experience
Our client was looking for an end-to-end solution that checks for missing episodes and subtitles as well as undelivered or duplicate features and shows, ideally with little or no manual intervention.
In addition, the European languages on published editorial metadata needed validation and the audio and caption languages had to match the tagging on playable assets. For those reasons, it was imperative to find a fully automated testing practice to pull content from content sheets. Our client also expected consolidated execution repos that update automatically for every iteration. This required:
- A phase-wise deployment automation
- Moving content testing operations to an automated framework
- Standardizing and optimizing processes for defect prediction, test traceability, trend analysis and metrics visualization
The Solution
Moving content testing operations to an automated Spyglass model
HCLTech used advanced analytics and customized tools to streamline script creation and execution for our client, utilizing AWS instances and integrating continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) with Jenkins. AppScan ensured security standards and selenium grids enabled efficient asset verification. Reusable UI components and effective strategies reduced script writing time and optimized code execution, enabling HCLTech to successfully address our client's problems, streamline operations and improve performance.
To improve accuracy in content verification for the European market, HCLTech developed advanced language algorithms for Cyrillic characters, verified language and region through hash maps and third-party APIs and used complex data-handling techniques. By implementing these advanced solutions, we were able to ensure high levels of accuracy in content verification, enabling the successful release of content on web and OTT platforms in Europe.
The Impact
High productivity, accuracy and cost efficiency
HCLTech optimized our client's content verification lifecycle, resulting in significant benefits:
- Content validation TAT was reduced from seven days to 2-3 hours
- Manual effort for audio and caption validation was reduced by 70%
- Metadata and purple image validation reached 100% accuracy, reducing overall testing efforts by 60%, while test data and asset accuracy improved by 80%
- Failure incidents were quickly resolved with the help of Spyglass's centralized reports
HCLTech's next-gen technologies made our client's content verification and delivery productive, accurate, efficient and cost-effective. Additionally, they can now automate future script creation practices and enhancements with ease using the provided solution.
