In 2012 the Open University had been searching for an off-the-shelf product that could take pressure off their media production staff. They were looking for a system that could help manage the production of all their audio and video output and to help capture the complex 3rd party copyright licenses that are part and parcel of creative output.

Various software vendors offered small parts of a solution, but the University couldn't find one, or even two systems that could meet their overall requirements.

The Open University turned to Glen (our Founder and CEO, who had previously designed and built systems for the University), to design and develop a system that met all their requirements. The project team called the new system The Production Portal.

Feedback on the system, even at the earliest stages, was fantastic. University staff and their external film producers loved working with their new system, which made even the most complex aspects of creating content easier.

In 2015 the project was nominated for two awards, and it won both. The Digital Innovation of the Year Award at The Times Higher Education Leadership and Management Awards recognised the Production Portal’s contribution to “technology to improve the administration or management of an institution.”

The project went on to win the Best Cloud Project of the year at the Computer Weekly European User Awards, where it won for its "innovation and creativity" in utilising Microsoft's Azure Cloud.

The Production Portal has been in use at the Open University for over 8 years and is now used by over 900 people involved in all aspects of content creation: commissioners, producers, filmmakers, licensing staff, and department heads.

The system now not only manages the production process for all the University’s audio and video output (including TV programmes), but it now manages the creation of other types of output, such as books, e-books, websites, promotional material, and radio programmes.

The Production Portal does everything the Open University was searching for but couldn’t find in an off-the-shelf package.

With the launch of Production Mill, the complete package is now available as a commercial Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) system, hosted on the Microsoft Cloud.

The Production Mill system revolutionised the media creation process at the Open University and it is now available to revolutionise your organisation’s media creation processes too.

Production Mill provides an end-to-end Media Production System for any type organisation that creates output. Not only educational organisations such as The Open University but for all companies that produce creative content or deal with copyrighted materials.