Sony Professional announces launch of new Business Consulting arm

Sony Professional today announced its newly formed Business Consulting team. Following five successive years of growth for Sony’s Professional Services division and a record 2008 - registering €153 million in sales across EMEA - the Business Consulting team has been established to provide specialist consultancy to media companies across EMEA on how best to innovate and transform their businesses.

Building on the success of its design consultancy, systems integration and training teams, and on technical consulting contracts such as BSkyB in the UK, Sony’s Professional Services has strengthened its capabilities to understand its customers’ businesses by recruiting the highly experienced Business Consulting team. The in-house team bring not only wide consulting experience but first-hand operational knowledge of the media industry, having spent significant parts of their careers in media and broadcasting organisations producing and delivering content. The team is further strengthened by a network of some 30 freelance consultants and specialists.

Managing Business Consultant, Jonathan Crofts, said: “The Business Consulting team provides innovative ways to help clients achieve strategic and organisational goals. We are committed to providing a team that recognises the creative environment in which our clients work. As the media, broadcast and technology markets have converged, media companies now need a much greater understanding of how to transform their organisations to respond to their own customers’ expectations of content anytime, anywhere, and any place – on any device.”

The team works with board- or C-level decision makers to provide advice on the people, process and financial issues they face, ensuring they way they work, the skills they have, the technology they use, and their organisation’s culture and structure, support the delivery of their business strategy, and address the challenges of the converging, multi-platform media industry.

On the strengthening of the focus on helping customers deliver their business objectives, Matthew Coombs, director of Sony’s Professional Services division, said: “We are always looking at ways to build on our growing reputation as a Professional Services team. The media industry is undergoing a rate of change that is unparalleled in its entire history. This is compounded by a challenging economic environment, which has hit organisations still reeling from the massive shift in consumer demands and habits. Sony PSE now offers a comprehensive range of services which positions it for the future as a true strategic partner for our customers.”

For more information on Sony Professional Business Consulting, visit www.pro.sony.eu/services