SAP drives EMI's music business performance in the digital age

The SAP rollout underpins the company's efforts to evolve successfully with the changing customer and market demands of the digital age by better analyzing regional and global business performance and responding more quickly with new products and business models.

With the aim of harmonizing financial and sales processes, increasing transparency and improving efficiency of global reporting, SAP's enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is replacing various legacy systems for accounting, purchasing, sales order capture and financial reporting. With the first phase of the global rollout successfully completed in the UK and Ireland in 2004, mySAP ERP is currently being rolled out in Japan and will be extended globally over the next three to five years.

"The entertainment industry is changing dramatically and we aim to evolve accordingly to take advantage of the opportunities arising from new sales and distribution channels," said Andrew Hickey, Chief Technology Officer, EMI Music. "After re-evaluating our global sales and financial processes and identifying potential areas of benefit, we found SAP's ERP suite to be best-suited to help us adapt with these business changes. With SAP we will have a single, integrated solution to help track, analyze and manage worldwide business performance and make faster, more-informed decisions based on real-time financial and market insight."

EMI Music is successfully transforming its business to meet the changing needs of its customers and the growing prevalence of the digital marketplace via Internet, cell phones and portable media players. With the increasing complexity of a customer base served by ever more regional and global retailers, the company required faster information analysis as well as greater flexibility to seize opportunities with new product types and business models.

By streamlining sales, accounting and purchasing processes, EMI will be able to manage business performance across the globe more effectively. Working on a single platform, EMI employees around the world will gain enhanced visibility across regional and global sales and improved analytical capabilities to proactively manage business performance, profit and growth.

"The media and entertainment industry's complexity of sales channels, short-lived trends and changing business models are revealing the functional limits of legacy IT systems," said Nils Herzberg, senior vice president, Product and Technology Group, SAP, "EMI has recognized the need for and value of mySAP ERP, the next-generation ERP solution that enables greater visibility into global business performance and faster, well-informed response to customer demands."