MTV Oy is the leading commercial TV company in Finland: we are the home of phenomena, current topics and stars. The media family includes streaming service MTV Katsomo and C More, TV channels MTV3, MTV Sub and MTV AVA, MTV Uutiset, which broadcasts current news on multiple channels, and pay TV channels. In addition, MTV arranges Finland's largest societal festival, SuomiAreena, in cooperation with the city of Pori every summer. MTV also organizes the TV & MEDIA -event for the TV and media industry annually. MTV is part of Telia Company – paving the way to further develop the whole media industry.
In 2019, MTV’s broadcasting partner, Red Bee Media, centralized its Playout Services in Stockholm, Sweden. Simultaneously, MTV’s broadcast automation software was replaced with a new one.
MTV adopted Frends iPaaS for more efficient integration development, enhanced data transparency, and less dependency on specific systems. The integration platform was particularly vital in deploying Salesforce and harmonizing sales management with Swedish TV4.
Broadcasting is a complex, fast-paced, and constantly evolving business that needs to operate around the clock. Offering content via linear TV and digital channels and having an advertising-financed business model requires combining various technologies.
“Broadcasting is such a niche business in which not many technology providers operate. Hence, there is no master application to cover it all, but we must create our custom-made solution with many technologies,” says Veli-Matti Huhtala, Product Owner at MTV.
In 2017, MTV discovered that the high number of point-to-point integrations had slowly become a burden. So the media company started exploring options to help customer data, budgets, and forecasts flow smoother with more efficient integration development.
“Earlier, we had tried a few integration platforms, but they were too stiff for our needs. We started to explore technologies allowing a process model for integration development. Low-code Frends iPaaS matched our needs perfectly and, in addition, provides a simple user interface visualizing processes,” says Huhtala.
Frends iPaaS made the centralization of playout services smooth and efficient without risking the flow of data in the process. Furthermore, MTV is no longer dependent on any current systems, but the switch will be easy in the future.
MTV rebuilt their integrations on top of Frends iPaaS to enhance monitoring of data and locating incidents. The goal was to use Frends as an interpreter that modifies data in the form required by different systems.
“Frends has the business logic and determines in which format the information is forwarded. Frends operates in between systems modifying data. In addition, we built APIs that Red Bee Media and TV4 can utilize. The communication between systems is now extremely fluent and reliable,” says Karhunen.
MTV piloted Frends with its former CRM system, Microsoft Dynamics. In 2021, due to the acquisition, MTV introduced Salesforce to harmonize its operations with Swedish TV4. The deployment was highly successful, as all APIs were ready-made.
“Frends iPaaS made the CRM switch as efficient as possible as we only needed a new kind of mapping and some minor alterations. The receiving end for customer data already existed as we could utilize APIs made for our previous CRM system,” says Huhtala.
“Frends is the crucial interpreter between different systems, and it supports our microservice thinking. It would be impossible to manage the current status without Frends,” says Huhtala.
As a low-code platform, Frends iPaaS assures fast deployment of changes for MTV. In addition, MTV appreciates the platform's versatility that supports different methods, like XML and database search.
With Frends iPaaS and its capability to utilize existing integrations, MTV could deploy Salesforce fast and efficiently. Now, integration management and development are convenient and allow scalability without limitations. In addition, the integration architecture is not dependent on any specific technologies, but they can be flexibly replaced.
MTV appreciates the fluent long-term cooperation with Frends.
“Frends iPaaS makes locating and resolving incidents fast. We enjoy the versatile platform, which allows our independent testing, database searches, and task performance. However, we wouldn’t possibly have time to manage all integration management and development ourselves. With the close cooperation and everyday communication with the Frends team, they truly feel like our team members or colleagues,” says Tam Tran, Service Manager at MTV Oy.