5 Brilliant Ways Media and Entertainment Companies are Building Competitive Advantage

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Case in Point5 Brilliant Ways Media and Entertainment Companies are Building Competitive Advantage

Keeping up in the entertainment industry is hard enough. When you don’t have dependable information on the true cost of a project or your actual cash position, it’s mission impossible. And while the industry is evolving―with gaming, VOD, and virtual reality joining the traditional lines―the importance of financial control remains the same.

Like every other media/entertainment company, you need to track production costs, properly recognize revenue, consolidate results, report/analyze data,

calculate and pay contributors, budget and forecast accurately, and integrate with industry-specific systems. All without a big finance team or huge IT investments.

Fortunately, we have good news for you. There are media and entertainment companies achieving it all. In this eBook, we’ll explain how companies like yours take control and build competitive advantage. We’ve included real examples to help you envision how you can use these solutions to transform your business.

1. Automate business processes to increase productivity

2. Empower teams with visibility into performance

3. Connect data across best-in-class applications

4. Remove the distractions of IT

5. Work with a partner who knows your industry

Legendary Entertainment migrated its operations to Intacct and Adaptive Insights to support new business units, multiple currencies, and international expansion. RKL eSolutions experts simplified global consolidations and ensured the finance team can spend more time on proactive business management for the growing company.

“We’ve always known that RKL eSolutions is looking out for us. They’ve scaled with us as we’ve scaled—continuing to offer the same sound, informed advice and solutions that enable us to focus more on our business, and less on our accounting software,” said Dino Gioia, Senior Vice President of Finance for Legendary Entertainment.

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Case in PointAutomate business processes to increase productivity

When you depend upon QuickBooks or legacy accounting packages to manage your finances, you often need spreadsheets to create consolidated reports, record allocations, and analyze revenue. And double entry into entertainment industry applications and finance wastes time and increases opportunity for error.

By automating data entry and manual tasks, you increase accuracy, shorten the monthly close cycle, and simplify reporting. With process automation, your finance team can stay lean and mean and add much more value to your

organization.

Time to look forwardFreed from manual tasks like duplicate data entry, your finance team can spend more time looking forward, taking proactive steps to manage costs and handle exceptions―keeping small issues from turning into big problems.

With Intacct’s best-in-class financial management and Adaptive Insights’ Corporate Performance Management (CPM) solution, you can:

• Eliminate the spreadsheets that manage budget and planning, consolidate reports, track royalties, allocations, project costs, fixed assets, and other details.

• Automate inter-entity transactions and other multi-entity challenges.

• Apply workflows to simplify and control purchasing, payments, and employee expenses.

• Use up-to-date exchange rates for currency conversions and revaluations.

Canada-based Elevation Pictures, a film distribution company with an aggressive business plan for significant growth was using Excel to manage finances. Anticipating a growing film library and organizational complexity, they needed a solution that would automate key processes to keep the staff lean.

Working with RKL eSolutions, Elevation implemented Intacct financial management. With Intacct, the finance team can proactively manage growth while the system handles the details behind complex financial and operational reporting with multi-currency adjustments, multi-dimension tracking, expense allocations, and royalty tracking.

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Case in PointEmpower teams with visibility into performanceOver the past decade, the entertainment industry has been on the cutting edge of the information explosion. In today’s market, decisions have to be driven by data instead of gut feelings. Every aspect of managing the business requires financial data—provided in real time and easy to understand—to support better decisions.

Flexibility to support creative business models As the entertainment and media industry evolves, companies mitigate risk through a variety of business models—from joint ventures to partnerships—resulting in complicated revenue and cost allocations. You need higher quality information without the burden of extra costs, external tools, and IT effort.

Intacct’s multi-entity architecture supports flexible financial reporting and analysis to:

• Deliver instant visibility into performance, using financial and business metrics to monitor your strategies and projects.

• Track, slice, dice, and summarize KPIs.

• Provide metrics that matter most to each person—like cash balances, project profitability, or budgets—through dashboards with live data.

Combined with Adaptive Insights’ unified corporate performance management solution, your team has the ability to manage complex planning, forecasting, and reporting no matter where their work takes them.

XIX Entertainment provides TV and music production, social media engagement, public relations, entertainment marketing, and other services for artists and athletes.

Through their startup years, XIX entrusted their bookkeeping to an outside CPA. As the growth of the company demanded more control and timely access to financial data, Jared Lindsey, CFO, looked to RKL eSolutions, whom he had worked with previously.

Based on XIX’s requirements, which included cloud-based, multi-entity management, intercompany transactions, consolidated reporting, and multi-currency, RKL eSolutions recommended Intacct. In less than 60 days, Intacct was up and running to support the next phase of XIX’s growth.

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Case in PointConnect data across best-in-class applicationsMedia and entertainment organizations depend on specialized applications to run many aspects of the business. From CRM to payroll to travel, there are best-in-class

systems that handle the details of your business efficiently.

The challenge comes in combining the data from all of those systems into one, manageable information source. At the core of your business, the financial management system should provide the platform to gather, organize, and deliver information to the people who need it.

The whole pictureWith integration built on open web APIs, Intacct connects with the applications you depend on—like CRM, rights management, payroll, expense management, budgeting and forecasting, and AP automation. Cloud API tools allow you to:

• Streamline business processes with automated communication between your business systems.

• Get up and running quickly, regardless of the application you are connecting to Intacct.

• Tap into a wide range of integration choices from Intacct and our partners to quickly connect systems.

• Rest easy knowing your integrations won’t break when your software updates.

Critical Content, a global content studio, currently manages 50 or more projects at a time. Using Media Services to track production costs and payroll, Industry Edge for opportunity management, Concur for travel and expense management, and Adaptive Insights for budgeting and forecasting, Critical Content needed to consolidate information from all systems.

Using Intacct financial management as the foundation, RKL eSolutions helped Critical Content connect all their systems. Now they can provide project leaders with a single view and deliver important insights with Intacct at the hub.

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Case in PointRemove the distractions of ITTechnology is a driving force in the entertainment and media industry, but the back office operations are often on the bottom of IT’s list. Your IT team is pulled in a million

directions, so creating reports or writing integrations for the accounting team are usually not the highest priority.

Lack of IT support is frustrating for the finance team. Without the reports they need, they typically resort to entering data into spreadsheets. And when new functionality is released for their accounting system, they have to wait for the IT team to find time to upgrade their system.

Financial management in the cloudWith a cloud-based financial management system, your IT team can focus their time on production and distribution technology instead of reporting. The finance team can take advantage of the most current business management capabilities and functionality without interruption. With tools like Intacct and Adaptive Insights, you’ll be able to:

• Eliminate the distractions of maintaining on-premises accounting software, integrations, and system upgrades.

• Ensure the security of your data and business continuity.

• Scale the system easily and quickly as your business grows.

• Enable finance employees to be productive anywhere, giving them access to the system on their device or web browser of choice.

A US-based film distributor, Legendary was using Sage 300 to manage finances. They needed to implement a more robust financial management system, but did not have the IT staff to manage an on-premises solution like Microsoft Dynamics GP.

Working with RKL eSolutions, Legendary implemented cloud-based Intacct financial management. With Intacct’s multi-dimensional GL structure, the finance team can create the reports they need without any coding. Integration with best-of-breed applications has reduced data entry and freed IT resources to proactively support the growth of the company.

Case in Point

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Case in PointWork with a partner who knows your industryBusinesses in the entertainment and media industry deal with a unique set of challenges such as tracking production costs, properly recognizing revenue,

consolidating results, calculating royalties, budgeting...and accurately reporting on all of those details. It’s a complicated business.

Best practices gained through experience Only a technology partner who has experienced the complexities of the entertainment business can truly understand how to help your organization improve the processes and outcomes from your financial management systems.

At RKL eSolutions, we’ve spent years working with small and large media and entertainment businesses. We can see around the corners to help you avoid the pitfalls and anticipate the future. As a true partner, we will:

• Recommend procedures that improve productivity now and build a foundation to support future growth.

• Help you automate consolidations for reports and dashboards by customer, vendor, project, and more.

• Provide guidance to replace cumbersome budgeting with continuous planning and rolling forecasts.

Due to rapid expansion, Avalon, an industry leading talent management, production and live promotions company was saddled with an outdated, user-hostile industry solution. With no way to easily integrate other software or manage project accounting, they spent too much time maintaining manual spreadsheets. Inflexible reporting forced even more dependence on Excel.

By switching to Intacct cloud-based financials, employees have access to the easy-to-use system no matter where their work takes them. Data dimensions support detailed analysis and project-based P&L reporting.

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Technology and trustAt RKL eSolutions, an engagement isn’t just a project. It’s an important phase in a long-term relationship. Striving to build a lifetime partnership, we are committed to adding value to your business, now and as you grow. Our experienced consultants have a passion for making every facet of your business successful.

We sit on your side of the table. Having worked with many entertainment and media companies like yours, we understand the challenges you face. Through transparency in every process and every decision we make as a team, we will minimize the fear, hesitation, and risk you face as you consider a mission-critical technology implementation.

Let RKL eSolutions help you build your competitive advantage with an “A-list” solution—one that transforms your finance department and accelerates your growth and success. Schedule a complimentary assessment today.

(717) 735-9109 • (888) 222-8827 sales@rklesolutions.com • www.rklesolutions.com

“From the beginning, RKL eSolutions worked with us and for us to find the best application for our business. We began to think of them not as a vendor or a software implementer, but as a partner in the business – one that always acts in our best interest.”

Watch the short video to find out why Kelly Wall, VP Accounting for Legendary Pictures chose RKL eSolutions to implement their new Adaptive Insights Budgeting and Planning tool.