Instead of hiding from these, I have included some food for consideration that I derived from SAP which I hope you find helpful, I certainly did find them useful and would welcome your comments.

Too BIG
For many years, the perception of SAP as providing software for the world’s largest companies has been driven by the fact that this is the truth – but only because it was big companies that first recognized the benefits that such solutions could deliver, and because big companies did not have to wait until more cost effective ways of benefiting from the software were available.

If we draw an analogy with air travel, the first users of aircraft were military because they did not have to develop the infrastructure needed to fly, maintain and operate aircraft. They had their own. And it was quite a long time from the early “passenger” flights for a few wealthy travellers to the worldwide adoption of air travel by the masses. We needed airports with major facilities, airlines, travel agents and many other service providers, before we reached the point where you or I could buy a ticket to the other side of the world without needing to buy our own airplane and recruit our own staff.

SAP applications have been built around the knowledge gained through thousands of implementations, inheriting an understanding about how business processes really work. Generally smaller businesses don’t need different processes, they just do less volume, with less people than their larger counterparts. If anything, smaller companies need more sophisticated software to help them keep costly “workarounds” to a minimum.  A company may be small today, but having software that can cope with the demands placed on it as the company grows is vital to the success and growth prospects.

Is SAP too expensive?
“Too expensive” is a criticism that has been levelled at SAP in the past. The truth is, when you look at the cost of SAP software it is actually good value, even when it is deployed as a “point” solution to address areas like CRM or PLM. However, all stories are based on some degree of fact. Yes, SAP projects have historically been expensive. In the 1990’s, a major paradigm shift occurred in business development with the launch of Michael Hamer’s book “Reengineering the Business”. This book became the bible for many consulting firms who looked at the whole “Business Process Reengineering” (BPR) concept as a great opportunity to generate new revenue streams by helping their customers undertake such projects. The only software available at the time that could cope with the massive changes in business process layout was SAP R/3. Thus, SAP became associated with the entire project cost for the business re-design – not just the software implementation – and with that developed SAP’s reputation for having a hefty price tag.

The truth, as we know, is that SAP solutions can be installed in days and have ROI in weeks if this is what the customer needs.

Through better packaging of the overall solution using mySAP All-in-One we are seeing significant cost reductions and implementation methodology is also being refined to reduce costs in this area.

Is SAP too Complex?
Complexity is a relative term.   SAP has a range of solutions that will address any company’s needs regardless of their size and requirements. Complexity is often a result of the particular functionality required or the project management required or the time constraints.   When you look at the processes in a midsized business, they are very similar to those in a large company operating in the same sector. It is through this complexity that small businesses often gain their competitive advantage.

For example, a small company is far more likely to create unique pricing structures for each customer/product combination; a large organization is more likely to use a standardized pricelist. This same flexibility is often found throughout an SME: a midsized enterprise or business will be responsive to market pressure, whereas a large multinational will always try to simplify – sometimes to the detriment of their customer service.  SAP solutions provide small and midsized enterprises with the opportunity to use this kind of complexity to their advantage, by enabling them to respond quickly to the needs of a changing market.

Does SAP take too long to implement?
The length of implementation is often not directly related to the software itself, but to the change management the implementation is associated with. Although many projects using SAP applications have been lengthy, this is more because of the tremendous amount of pre-work required in designing new business processes.   In the mid-market, customers either have a very clear view of what they want and why they want it, or, more typically, want help to define the processes they need. In either case, the project time is much reduced. However, it is also important to be realistic. Given the increasing popularity of the use of Best Practices in mySAP All-in-One , customers ask for the delivery of working solutions, but the bottleneck becomes their ability to learn and adopt the solution being offered.

Let the debate begin … Can I have your comments?

For some time I have been waxing lyrical on this topic, trying to persuade the Record industry that it is time to embrace the concept of paperless society. It is very refreshing to hear Rachel’s views, and see that the problem is also prevalent in Publishing.
 
Distributing statements digitally has numerous business benefits – some of the most obvious being the cost savings in postage, paper, printing, and the manpower to collate the statements, with a side benefit of the ability to say you are “going green”. However, I would say that we need to consider the approach very carefully. Going digital by simply emailing statements only takes you part of the way and means the Publisher will miss out on massive opportunities, especially the opportunity to improve transparency to its authors, add value, improve author relations, speed up communication, and even streamline the statement process.
 
Using a web portal for Authors will add far more value than simply emailing a PDF / scanned statement, or even an excel file. Authors are vital to the success of the Publisher so taking steps to provide them with an impressive portal through which they can view and interact with their statements will certainly add value. Functionality that makes sense would be the provision of statement summaries, drill down to a lower level, payment detail and history, download of raw data files (excel), and broadcast messaging. Real opportunity then lies in the ability to use this as the base to provide massive additional value, such as industry trends, product sales data (instead of just royalty information) – functionality that would help the Publisher by enabling authors to update their own information reducing the burden on the Publisher. Clearly all this functionality has to have the required controls and security, but none of this is new – we all encounter this every day with our online banking, our grocery stores online orders, purchases from Amazon and other online stores. This is the digital age, why don’t we embrace it? Why does the industry fear the challenges that have been overcome already?
 
Taking the opportunity to give this degree of visibility will be well received by authors as a significant attempt by the publisher to improve transparency. As the publisher moves to electronic payments coupled with digital statements, they will find themselves far more efficient and streamlined, and in a much better position to cope with the demands of the stressful statement deadlines. Imagine the comfort of knowing that systems can automatically verify that payment and statements match, control when statements are available on the web, and allow the company to retract them if there is a need, and know who has viewed their statements.
 
Over the last 18 months we have been working with a major Record company to create an Online Artist Portal such as the above, which is due to go live in the next 2 months. Watch this space – very soon you will see a Portal giving Artists, Producers and Management companies access to statement summary, drilldown to detail, payment history, and even downloads to raw data. This is definitely something that the wider industry needs to embrace very soon. Although change is always difficult, this particular change will deliver huge benefit and improvement in relations. It is very encouraging to hear how excited the labels are to have this functionality, and how interested they are in providing the best possible service to their artists.

This is a good point and worth considering. No company wants to involve external stakeholders in their processes too early. No company wants to air their dirty laundry. No matter how committed we are to honest fully transparent disclosure, we are all too aware of the fact that systems can be prone to errors which is why statements are review statements before they are distributed.

Involving external stakeholders too early could mean they see errors and omissions before you get the opportunity to resolve them, leading to a decrease in confidence and increase in queries.

Well, I am not proposing to involve external stakeholders before you are internally ready.

At the moment, statements are signed off internally before the statement is finalised and sent to Artists. What I am suggesting is almost the same, with a few extra steps: at the point where the statement is signed off internally, we treat this is “ready for artist review” and then involve the Artist Management Company in the review. At this point, before treating the statement as finalised give the Management Company the opportunity to perform their own review and signoff. By requesting they approve the content of the statement before it is finalised, they become integral to the process. They also become part of the chain of people who made the statement what it is (correct and accurate, or incomplete and erroneous).

In this way we are encouraging Management Companies to find errors early and resolve them up front instead of the current approach which can mean audits follow many years later. The Guardian recently published Floyd go after EMI’s money where they reported that “Pink Floyd, the band behind Dark Side of the Moon, one of the best-selling albums in music history, have filed a lawsuit against EMI, claiming the private equity-backed firm has miscalculated royalty payments.”

Following the approach in this blog can never remove all risk, but certainly should improve the chance of issues, omissions or miscalculations being identified upfront. When these issues are uncovered many years later the challenges are immense – the circumstances are no longer fresh in reviewers minds; recalculations are more difficult and often manual; information needed is no longer readily at hand and sometimes archived.

Apart from all this, how can a Management Company request an audit when they were involved in reviewing and signing off the statement in the first place?

Greg brings a wealth of sales and commercial experience to the G3 Global team with him, previously working in different industries from Financial to Sport. In Greg’s previous role as Commercial Manager at Harlequins RLFC he spent a number of years negotiating numerous sponsorship deals and building relationships with companies such as Puma, Gatorade, and Maximuscle. Greg has also grown considerable contacts and a deep understanding of the difficulties that Sports Clubs and companies face in the Sports and Sponsorship arena. The ever-growing sports industry is something that has great scope and fits very comfortably in G3 Global’s core speciality sector, namely Media and Entertainment.

“There is loads of potential in this market which relies heavily on  data, making SAP BusinessObjects a perfect tool to solve the industry’s pain, turning data into knowledge and then into profit. My big focus will be on delivery and enjoying long lasting business relationships where clients get to maximize their ROI quickly”, said Whitaker.

Greg will be assisting G3 Global continue our strategy to develop and enhance our offering in the Industry by growing our Business Objects practice in the existing Media space within which we operate, as well as growing our reach into the Sport and Entertainment sector.

Artists have employed professional management companies well experienced in all aspects of managing their affairs. Record companies have employed large departments who perform detailed reviews of Royalty statements before sending them, together payments if applicable, to the artist. However, reviewing tens of thousands of statements each statement period, with large volumes and huge time pressure means that errors and omissions are bound to creep in undetected. Being under constant cost constraints does little to help the situation as record companies address decreasing revenue by reducing headcount every year. How does one resolve this constant downward spiral – how do the detailed checks required to avoid errors or omissions get done with ever reducing manpower? Without it, Record companies will inevitably face even more audits causing further pressure on the already stretched Royalty departments as more artist audits ensue… and worse, the heavy costs and penalties when errors are found.

It seems to me the solution is staring us in the face – involve the artist management company in the process! Instead of simply sending them a completed statement for review at their leisure, involve them in the process early. Transform Artist Management Companies from being beneficiaries of the process, to fully involved stakeholders in the process. Here’s how it works: after the royalty administrators have reviewed the statements and had them signed off by business affairs, include a stage for Management Company review where they are given the access and information required to sign off the statement. Apart from identifying issues at this early stage and therefore avoiding potential audits, a key benefit of this approach is improvement in artist relations by involving them and their Management Companies very early, improved transparency through fuller visibility much earlier in the process.

Over the past 2 years we have been running numerous events, seminars, and webinars addressing key areas of interest and concern in the Media sector. Our new site has incorporated an Events section outlining all upcoming events with further details on each.

We have also introduced Blogging into our site where our Subject Matter Experts will be writing industry observations, technical advancements and experiences, and the latest in the world of SAP and Media.  We hope that this section will stimulate discussion and debate in the industry, sharpen our thinking, and spur us on to improve the technology that supports us. I would welcome feedback and ideas on topics that would be of interest.

Lastly, we have started to present our company’s products and services more clearly. In particular, G3MediaSuite (SAP certified All-in-One solution for Media) is an extensive solution portfolio that needed to be presented more simply. The new website is structured in a way that will enable us to improve the way this is presented and in future will incorporate online demos. In addition, with examples such as our recent partnering with BusinessObjects we now have platform to more quickly show the ever growing capabilities within the G3 family.

I look forward to hearing your feedback in the coming months and hope you find this site a useful repository for information as we start to grow the resources available on it.

G3 Global is very pleased to welcome Mike Slemmings to our growing team of Media Consultants. Mike joins the G3 Management team as a Programme Manager in the Technology and Product Development team reporting to Andrew Borresen.

Mike brings with him extensive SAP experience, of which more than 10 years has been within the Media sector in companies such as Sony Music, EMI Music, Universal Pictures & the BBC

Mike has been successfully delivering projects for over 16 years in all positions from functional consultant to programme director, and has also had operational responsibility giving him a solid client side view of solution ownership issues. He will be assisting G3 Global continue our strategy to develop and enhance our Industry specific solution (G3MediaSuite) to cover all Media sub-verticals, specifically Music and Broadcasting considering his experience in this area.

We can all speculate as to the reasons why, whether it is the credit crunch or simply an induced panic state as a result of a perceived economic decline. That being said, many companies appear to be in the same boat: they are being asked to reduce their costs, do more with what they have and in some cases projects are being put on hold until this is addressed.

I understand this can cause an issue and the following may sound familiar to you.

Learning where you can use enterprise software and for what

We have spent the last 2 years developing and packaging an SAP offering for the Media and Communications industry that wish to develop a true enterprise solution, so please rest assured that we understand the work that is required to truly understand how it can be used and integrated to benefit the business. In other words, what is likely to be asked of you…plus your day job.

Our solution is simple

We have a team of SAP Pre-sales consultants who would be delighted to talk you through where SAP can be used in your business and indeed its potential benefit to you.
If you are being asked to do ‘more with less’, then we may well be able to help you optimize your investment in looking at an SAP solution to either help you to use it in projects that are on hold or presenting a business challenge.

>Where can we help you
Whether you run SAP or not, the inception of a project typically has one of two purposes.

1. To fix an issue that is causing a concern or impeding the business
2. To ‘enable’ the business or a project in some way or form

Either way, there is a strong chance we can help you, or at the absolute minimum advise you of some potential routes forward.
If any of the above rings bells with you we would be delighted to speak with you.

We will be available at SAP’s offices in Bedfont Lakes on March 10^th 2009 and will have a number of our pre-sales team and technical consultants available to speak with you.

We will also spend approximately an hour talking through what we understand the typical industry pains to be and where we have helped our customers solve them.

What I can commit to you is that we will speak in plain English and identify areas where we can help to make your life easier.

The feedback we’ve received is from our existing SAP customer’s which is why we have sent this to you. Sharing best practice and offering simple solutions is how we work and we would be delighted to speak with you if the need is there.

I hope that this information is useful to you and if you would like to discuss any of the above in further detail, feel free to give us a call.

• Reduced hardware cost
• Reduced man-power required for maintenance and support
• New developments for one country immediately available to another
• Reduced upgrade and SAP patch application effort
• Ease of implementation of common processes, with benefit of common documentation and related materials

The Return on Investment was so immediately apparent that G3 Global was subsequently awarded the project to commence this process with the consolidation of the first 4 countries into a single instance. Over a 4 month period, G3 successfully migrated the first territory onto a common European SAP instance which included migrating all the:

• System configuration and bespoke reports.
• Master data
• Account balances
• 3 months transaction data in order to enable a complete years transactions on the target instance, resulting in minimal disruption to reporting

After an initial go-live support phase, G3 Global handed over the day-to-day support of the first territory to the European SAP support team and the territory continues to benefit from G3 Global developments for the European instance.

The success of this project, and cost savings achieved has resulted in a formal strategy to merge all European countries into the single instance. Emanating out of this strategy, 8 countries have been successfully consolidated into the single instance.

On 24th June, G3 Global announced the official qualification of their SAP Media Suite solution called G3MediaSuite. This not only represents a major landmark for G3 as a company but the first true end to end solution available to the Media & Communications market.

Following a 10 year history successfully implementing SAP ERP solutions, G3 Global announced their status as an SAP VAR in October of last year. The next natural step was to develop a pre-packaged solution qualified and endorsed by SAP.

In keeping with their partnership with SAP and its Industry Business Units, G3 Global committed to develop a solution to package SAP in a way that was sympathetic to the dynamic nature of the mid market yet met the specific needs of the media and communications sector.

Says Chris Gunter, CEO of G3 Global ‘This is a tremendous milestone for G3 Global as a company and the opportunity it poses to our customers, existing and potential. The media and communications market has never been short of bespoke software solutions but G3 MediaSuite will represent the only true ‘end to end’ enterprise solution available today’.

This will undoubtedly be embraced by the Media and Communications sector. SAP has typically been synonymous with large scale organizations and to have the scalability of SAP in a pre-configured package will represent the opportunity for rapid implementations resulting in minimal disruption with optimum business benefit.

This accreditation further compounds G3 Global’s capability and commitment to the Media and Communications Sector. Chris Gunter added ‘Our customers rely on the fact that we bring industry expertise to the table. We are committed to delivering a fixed scope which ensures lower cost to our customers at a fixed price with no cost overruns and more importantly, no surprises’.