Now it all adds up for SWANK Motion Pictures, Inc.
Leading Non-Theatrical Content Distributor Drastically Reduces Royalty Closing Time.
“Getting rights and royalties management done right with the Vistex Go-to-Market Suite cloud platform has been a game-changer. We went from 20 days to 2 days to secure automatic calculation of complex royalties. Now we can efficiently manage all rights inside the systems, close all royalties and provide reporting and data files to studios.”
Carrie Schafer - CFO
Overview
Addressing the need to replace its legacy AS400 system, Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. sought a cloud-based solution to effectively integrate with its ordering and general ledger (GL) systems, reduce on-premise hardware requirements and IT infrastructure maintenance, and ease software update requirements. Swank introduces differing variables depending on orders received from distinct markets, making royalty calculations extremely complicated. Lacking true system connectivity between rights, orders and royalties, the company struggled to calculate the royalties it was obligated to pay its studio partners.
Swank worked with Vistex to address:
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Limitations of in-house custom systems built over 30 years
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Contract specs typically kept in paper format or on shared drives
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Manual completion of royalty calculations
Solution
Swank sought a flexible and robust rights and royalty management solution to meet their complex rights and royalty management needs. The company wanted a cloud-first enterprise solution to address the inability to integrate with its ordering and GL systems effectively, add new calculations for future growth and lower overhead. Rights vary by market, format and territory, with multiple dates required and various restrictions — including holdbacks, moratoriums and zip codes. The company updates rights daily and pushes to its systems nightly. The way rights are defined directly impacts royalty calculations, so Swank needed the flexibility to account for variations to define rights at the contract level.
Results
In selecting Vistex Go-to-Market Suite®(GTMS®), all titles were placed into 1 title group, with rights attached. Swank acquired a highly efficient solution that assigns rights in groups instead of at the individual level, eliminating human error while delivering greater rights entry efficiencies. Royalty calculations, reporting and controls are also managed in GTMS, which allows Swank to close work within the month.
As a result, royalty final closing time was reduced by 80%, and the company gained greater rights and royalties management efficiencies.
Other critical benefits realized:
- Significant reduction of manual processes and validations
- Ability to create specific and tailored exception reporting
- Efficiency enhancement related to statement extraction
- Specific field population at the time of record creation
- Customization of views and displays for specific requirements
- Availability dates are specific to the title, and moratoriums are built into the system
- Better management of rights at the studio, contract, market and title group level
About
Carlsberg Italia
Swank Motion Pictures, Inc. is the world’s largest content distributor to non-theatrical markets. Founded in 1937, the family-owned company partners with major studios to provide the rights, content and equipment needed to bring movies and television shows to a variety of facilities and venues, including worldwide cruise lines, U.S. colleges and universities, K-12 public schools and libraries, hospitals, parks, art museums and businesses. Swank takes great care in nurturing its relationships with studio partners and the outlets where the content is consumed.
Headquarters: St. Louis, MO
Industry: Media and Entertainment
Revenue: $77 million
Employees: 150
Solutions implemented:
SAP margin optimization solutions by Vistex
- SAP Go-to-Market Suite® (GTMS®) cloud platform
- Rights & Royalty Management