Global entertainment
With a mammoth music legacy extending back over 200 years, Warner Music Group (WMG) brings together artists, songwriters, and entrepreneurs in a global entertainment space. WMG’s Recorded Music operates in more than 70 countries through a network of affiliates and licensees. Meanwhile, WMG’s music publishing arm, Warner Chappell Music, has a catalog of over one million copyrights spanning every musical genre.
Money matters
Conscious the business needed an improved view of accounts, WMG implemented an Accounts Receivable (AR) module in its e-business suite (EBS) to capture all receivables-related data. The application was customized to align with the music industry’s terminology and specific business processes, but issues remained for the music goliath.
Using the AR module as it was, WMG struggled to obtain reports in a usable format. The complexity made any maintenance and report development a laborious process. Consequently, with massive amounts of resources consumed, the end business costs were huge. Warner Music needed the ability to give users the ad-hoc capability to run and create their reports in an easy, informed, and cost-efficient way.
A SplashBI AR solution
WMG chose SplashBI to develop customized invoice programs that could automate AR invoice distribution and implement advanced features for XML template reports, as well as seeded and bespoke custom reports. To ensure the teams were playing from the same song sheet, a step-by-step proof of concept was completed in 30 days by SplashBI before progressing.
Though the implementation was remote, SplashBI provided support throughout. The platform provider also delivered functional training, enabling WMG business users to get up to tempo with developing their AR reports.
A finance system in tune
Business users can now run, edit, and modify ad-hoc AR reports to match WMG’s requirements without using Macros in Excel. Time saving and accuracy have since improved for more than 10k transaction due dates. Moreover, both the technical team’s involvement and the manual efforts of business users have drastically reduced when bringing together data, creating standardized reports, assisting with month-end, and distributing invoices across countries and affiliates.
“I was able to discuss concepts and ideas with the SplashBI team for bespoke solutions to meet specific user requirements,” said Alison Gibson, senior business analyst at WMG, “We have optimized reporting and created new Receivable reconciliation reporting sets, including Aging reports and Trial Balance, speeding up the month-end closing process for the Sub-Ledger.”
For WMG, the results have produced considerable resource savings in costs and efficiencies, allowing the business to harmonize its global AR strategy.
Read the full Warner Music Group case study from SplashBI here.
