How Sky Switzerland is challenging streaming giants with a product team of 15 people

If you are into sports, TV shows, or movies, you certainly already know Disney+, Netflix, Sky, DAZN...

But here’s the trick: only one of them stands out as a true Swiss app, fully conceived and largely developed locally. Sky.

We’re different because Sky Switzerland is local, brought to you by a grand total of 51 passionate people, all working at our office in beautiful Neuchatel.?

The teams in Neuchatel are handling the entire product cycle from product development, to content management, to marketing, QA, and more, for all three of our services: Sky Sport, Sky Show, and Sky Store.?

Faster broadband, increasing subscription costs, and larger content catalogues of subscription video on demand (sVoD) services have continuously pushed consumer expectations up over the past decade. Consumers (rightfully) compare us to the big global players mentioned above, who are operating worldwide, and at a completely different scale.?

The fact that we “only” need to cover Switzerland does not mean it’s simple. Switzerland is a complex market with several languages, a multitude of technology platforms and a highly developed market, which translates into high expectations. We want our app to be available to everyone, on the devices they prefer. For some time, we offered our own Sky TV stick (hardware), but this meant customers had to wait for the device to be shipped after subscribing. Today, streaming content needs to be available instantly, people don’t want to wait to start enjoying great content! This is why our Sky app needs to work reliably on all the devices that Swiss customers use, whether it’s TVs, mobile phones, tablets, Macs and PCs, TV boxes, Apple TV, Chromecast, or game consoles, you name it. There is nothing worse than looking forward to watching the next episode of your favourite series, or an important football game, and facing sudden technical issues. This goes without mentioning that being in Switzerland, the app needs to support four languages.?

So the challenges to develop a top class app are many. Luckily, there are advantages to being a small team! We have the flexibility required to adapt to the market trends, and to changing customers' needs in no time. There is no bureaucracy and no over-engineered processes. Plus, the job is very interesting, everyone can jump in, be “multi-purpose” and help where they can. No two days are the same at Sky. We are on a mission!

Addressing the needs of our customers in Switzerland is not that different from the rest of the world, in that convenience always wins. People have to put up with more and more fragmentation in terms of where the content is being distributed. But they actually want it all in one place! Sky Switzerland successfully figured out a way to save people from having to go through different streaming apps to find the content they’re looking for. We call it in-app aggregation. Actually, as far as I know, Sky Switzerland is a world leader in in-app aggregation. In the sport segment, Sky Switzerland is already aggregating all of the sport offerings available in Switzerland in one app. The subscriptions can be paid all in one place as well. This setup is not only unique in the Sky ecosystem, it’s also unique in the world of streaming apps. Now, let's see if we can also figure out a way to make our customers' life easier when it comes to series and movies!

And we continue to build our uniqueness to create the best user experience for the Swiss streaming market. For the Sky app, the most important role of the product team is ensuring that the user experience (UX) never stands between the customer and the content. Why complicate an already saturated market when, today, most households are using multiple streaming services? This is why most streaming apps work similarly. Not only is the UX essential to make sure customers never spend too much time searching for content, but we also have to make sure there is always interesting and curated content available right from the start. At Sky, we put a lot of effort into making the customer feel at home, so that he or she knows exactly where to find all the features intuitively. We could compare this to navigating your home in the dark!?

Most of the software development work is done by our small team of in-house experts in Neuchatel. Keeping in mind that we must constantly optimize our app for the devices mentioned previously, we rely on our employees' deep knowledge and efficiency, as there are various technologies and each device has its own technical specificities. Ensuring that we have the right people to handle this, and working with them on building and improving our service, from UX design to software development and finally going to market, is by far the most fascinating and the most challenging part of being CPO at Sky.

If you have a technical profile and would love to see your work disrupt and benefit the Swiss streaming market and join a fun, top class team, we’re always open to new encounters! Head over to our LinkedIn profile and send a message!

For those of you who are generally fascinated by the industry, like to get more insight into our work, or want to hear the true voice of the people behind the Sky app: we have a lot more in the pipeline than you can imagine. Keep your eyes peeled!?