EMI Music Enhances Digital Supply Chain Performance Reporting and Boosts Sales

“Because we can monitor performance more effectively, we have greater visibility over the digital supply chain. We can ensure our local companies meet digital release deadlines and our overall digital sales objectives.”

Michael Laffey, Senior Director, Global Digital Operations, EMI Music

EMI Music chose to work with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner IMGroup, specialists in corporate performance management, to implement a new solution, Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005, in mid-2005. The scorecard solution provides graphical, high-level visibility into business performance. It presents and organises a range of metrics, which monitor digital supply chain efficiency and effectiveness.

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Document published March 2006

Business Needs

EMI Music works with world-leading artists and songwriters to produce an impressive collection of music content. With the fast growth of the online music industry, digital now accounts for around five per cent of the company’s overall revenue.

While EMI Music’s digital business was clearly delivering strong growth, the company realised that to deliver high performance across the digital supply chain it needed to step up the visibility and transparency of performance. Richard Piercy, Global Programme Director at EMI Music, says, “We have around 40 global subsidiaries, all of whom created information and delivered assets for digital releases. Each release has an artwork, audio, and metadata component. What is critical in the digital world is that all of these components are synchronised and coordinated appropriately throughout the supply chain. If the artwork and audio elements were on time but the metadata wasn’t, we could face trouble meeting release dates, which could in turn have an impact on the number of sales we made.”

EMI Music initially had a semi-manual process in place to report on the status of its supply chain. It collected data on a monthly basis, so any analysis was purely historical. Piercy says, “We collected our data in a Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2000 database and exported that information into a Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheet software document. From there, an employee had to manually build pivot tables to organise that information, create Microsoft Office PowerPoint® presentation graphics slides presenting the trends, and then send them out to the different subsidiaries. The whole process took around two days.

“With the growth of our digital business we realised we needed to automate our reporting process and have access to up-to-date information. With more timely production information, we aimed to better co-ordinate our supply chain processes, and ensure that our people could be more proactive in raising the quality of the processes.”

Solution

EMI Music chose to work with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner IMGroup, specialists in corporate performance management, to implement a new solution, Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005, in mid-2005. The scorecard solution provides graphical, high-level visibility into business performance. It presents and organises a range of metrics, which monitor digital supply chain efficiency and effectiveness.

The Business Scorecard Manager 2005 report views can be accessed through Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003. The site links to Microsoft Excel so that staff can easily drill down into scorecard data. IMGroup also developed structured scorecard reports using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services.

Now digital release data is updated daily. Users can view the information through SharePoint Portal Server, and the information can be sliced and diced according to specific parameters, such as by region or product type. Management can better assess company efficiency, and production staff can improve the timeliness and accuracy of their deliveries.

Reports are attributed either a red, amber, or green status. Red indicates that a release date has slipped or that there is outstanding work to be done, while green denotes a successful release. Essentially, the score card makes an immediate visual impression, which is easy to understand and interpret.

Benefits

As a result of the project, EMI Music expects that this tool will enable it to deliver high performance across its digital supply chain. Management can monitor performance and highlight exceptions more effectively. This means that they can make better informed decisions, faster. Production staff also have greater visibility of key performance indicators (KPIs) so they can react quickly to reports, and speed up the delivery of components to meet a release date. The new solution has transformed the way the company captures and processes business-critical data:

EMI Music estimates that it will save significant management and analytical time every month building and reviewing the report charts and tables manually.

Staff will no longer need to distribute reports globally—all the information can be accessed through SharePoint Portal Server. This also means that staff worldwide can collaborate better to ensure greater efficiency between offices.

Reporting is forward looking [proactive] as well as historical [reactive], helping to drive continuous improvement in supply chain performance.

Because the system is so easy to use, non-technical users can author reports themselves.

With a more efficient supply chain, EMI Music will be able to meet release date deadlines more effectively, and, as a result, optimise sales.

EMI Music management and production staff will have near real-time access to business-critical performance metrics. They can also analyse new data on a daily basis.

Because Business Scorecard Manager 2005 integrates seamlessly with SharePoint Portal Server, SQL Server, and the Microsoft Office suite of products, IMGroup were able to implement the solution quickly and easily.