The disparate and highly mobile nature of international
entertainment adds layers of complexity to all the usual business
problems. Jane Dudman investigates the IT that keeps the
shows on the road.
When Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards fell out of a tree
while on holiday in Fiji in April, spare a thought for his IT
manager.
The Stones were halfway through their A Bigger Bang world tour
and Richards’ fall meant the rock band had to postpone 15 European
concert dates. That is a lot of rearranging, and somewhere there is
an IT manager having to cope with the impact on their
administrative systems.
Some of today’s big artists now have such complex IT
requirements that they need to take a computer support technician
on tour with them. Joshua Kapellen for instance, a computer support
technician employed by US computer repair firm Geek Squad, has been
on tour with U2 since last year, providing technical support to the
120 people travelling on the band’s Vertigo world tour.
Today, entertainment is a multimillion-pound business and it is run
by global firms. Just like their blue chip counterparts, they need
customer databases, general ledger systems and payroll – but they
need some fairly business-specific software as well.
Like the system to keep track of how much of a cut the Red Hot
Chilli Peppers took the last time they played Hammersmith Apollo.
Or to keep track of the costumes and make-up used every night of a
global circus tour.
Being the IT manager of such a company has some similarities to
the jobs of everyday IT managers in a global enterprise – and some
big differences. We take a look at the way two such managers
approach their job.
Case study: Cirque du Soleil
Danielle Savoie has just outsourced her company’s IT in a £64m
deal. A sizeable deal, that took Savoie a good deal of hard work to
complete, for Savoie runs the systems for Montreal-based Cirque du
Soleil, a business that has, as she points out, “complex
needs”.
As a result, 84 IT staff have been transferred over to CGI, the
outsourcer that has won the Cirque du Soleil contract.
Cirque du Soleil is a major global business. It has 3,000
employees, of whom 900 are artists, appearing in the spectacular
shows that the company puts on around the world.
The company has three permanent offices in addition to its
Montreal headquarters, but most staff are on tour for a lot of the
time, usually staying for between four and six weeks in each city,
before packing up and moving on.
“Our culture is very specific. It has been a very big challenge
to go through its process of transformation to a new IT model. We
have had to review all our processes and governance models and the
business requirements for new information systems,” says
Savoie.
The company’s main finance and administrative system is SAP,
with separate applications for electronic document management and
for maintaining theatrical equipment. “SAP was not a good fit for
those areas, so we have implemented best-of-breed applications,”
says Savoie.
The company also has a highly complex payroll system, which has
to manage paying staff of many different nationalities, in
different currencies, for different amounts of time.
“For the core business, we have had to develop a set of
information systems specifically designed for what we do.” This
includes a system to support the task of casting the artists who
appear in the shows.
“We see a lot of talented people and a lot of demos. We need to
keep track of that, and of everything related to each artist, which
would include their address, any notes on immigration status, and
so on. That is all dealt with by an in-house application running on
a Microsoft platform,” says Savoie.
The unique nature of the Cirque du Soleil’s performances, with
complex, gymnastic movements, requires support from a number of
specific systems. One application is Kincirque, which is used in
the company’s training centre to keep track of the movements
carried out by artists and any injuries they may incur.
There is also a system to keep track of the make-up used by the
artists. “This is very important, because each artist is
responsible for their own make-up,” says Savoie.
“When I started, the information about the make-up, which is
very specific, was all held by one person in a big binder. Now we
have a centralised system, from which every artist can access their
own performance technical specifications. They learn the details
initially here in Montreal and it is all documented on a fact
sheet, with images and a step-by-step guide. They take away the
brushes and the colour and they are now self-sufficient.”
Another important system keeps track of the 15,000 separate
costumes required for performances and the 3,300 sets of
instructions relating to the costumes.
Stage management is another vital area that is now supported by
IT. “We have a fully-integrated business solution that provides
consistent and accurate data to help our stage technicians carry
out their job,” says Savoie.
One important aspect of this, which will be very familiar to
those in more corporate settings, is the ability to pull out
management reports and ensure that the quality of the shows is
consistent. “We have that information and are able to compare
performances, to ensure we retain the very highest level of
quality,” says Savoie.
Outsourcing this complex set of systems has been a major
challenge, but Savoie believes it will provide the company with the
best way forward as it looks to manage continuing growth.
Savoie consulted widely with peers in other businesses as part
of the outsourcing process. “Although they were not in the same
business, I was able to see what would be applicable to Cirque du
Soleil and the pitfalls to avoid,” she says.
“The challenge now is to keep the agility I had before with my
group. We are a very opportunistic business. We add new
opportunities all the time and that means I have to be very agile.
CGI is a huge business, but we have to keep CGI agile too.”
Case study: Live Nation
Rob Mason faces two major challenges. The technical challenge
for him, as for any other IT manager, is ensuring his business
users have the right information to get their jobs done
properly.
But getting the processes in place to do that has not been
entirely plain sailing. “This is a very entrepreneurial business.
These are the kind of people who do not like too many processes and
procedures,” says Mason.
Mason has been with Live Nation for the past three years. A
global concert company based in Beverly Hills, Live Nation, which
is a spin-off from US entertainment and events firm Clear Channel
Communications, last year promoted or produced more than 28,500
events, including music concerts, theatrical shows and motor sports
events. It runs more than 117 venues and has a turnover of
£1.6bn.
As the vice-president of IT for Live Nation International, Mason
looks after systems supporting 1,700 staff across Europe, with an
IT team of 25 people.
Live Nation owns some 30 venues in the UK, including London’s
Lyceum and Dominion theatres, the Edinburgh Playhouse and many
more. Through its stake in the Mean Fiddler organisation, Live
Nation also runs major music events such as the Glastonbury
Festival and open-air events in Hyde Park.
“We promote the events, but the main part of our business is the
venues, because that is where the customer gets the experience. A
successful show will be put through all our venues, but we have
many different shows going on at all our venues.”
Live Nation employs permanent staff at its venues, and each of
the shows, bands and concerts coming in to the venue brings its own
staff and equipment.
“We have the obvious systems to run our company, such as general
ledger, administrative systems and payroll. But what is unique to
us are the systems that enable us to handle the bookings process
into all the venues and do the deals on renting out the venues,”
says Mason.
While some venues house long-running shows such as the Lion
King, others are concert venues that will see a different act every
night. The company runs its own workflow system, called Artifax, to
manage the booking process, generate a contract and track the
transaction through to settlement.
Negotiating these deals is a complex process that is different
for each band booked. The system that supports this process has
been developed in-house, by the US parent company. “Acts come back
time and again and we need to know how much we offered them on
previous occasions,” says Mason.
The challenge has been that as a very people-based business,
Live Nation has only moved over to a centralised approach in the
past few years. Before that, this information was all on local
spreadsheets.
There is also an extensive customer database. “As a business, we
try to touch the customers more, so when people subscribe to our
website or buy tickets, we are passed that information and we
attempt to continue our dialogue with the customer,” says Mason.
“That is all about having a single customer view.”
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