Case Study: Top 10 Global Licensor in the Animation and Gaming Industry

Challenge

WestEnd Software’s future client, a large global licensor, was ready to upgrade from its legacy licensing software in order to overcome limitations on performance and interoperability that were impacting growth prospects.This client’s new requirements i ncluded significant functional upgrades, improved system performance and a more usable interface for 1000’s of users.

Approach

The Workspace suite is designed with three main principles: collaboration, compliance, and innovation. For this client, WestEnd relied heavily on these core principles during a detailed requirements discovery process, designing a solution that met functional and performance targets and creating a project plan that considered operational continuity, user training, and new development activities with the goal of meeting all key delivery milestones and dates.

Solution and Results

The Workspace solution framework is designed to support large enterprise implementations as well as the rapid development and deployment of new features and modules. By leveraging intuitive business process tools and dynamic workflows to support our client’s global operations, Workspace was deployed as a centralized platform for critical business activities, including contract negotiation, product design collaboration, royalty validation, accounting ledger, compliance tools, and a global reporting program. Workspace enables various business activities to be efficiently completed but does so with a focus on compliance and oversight, which provides real-time feedback on status, progress, and results.

The Workspace solution deployed for this client supports multiple business units, including unique tools for consumer products, publishing, and media distribution divisions. Additionally, Workspace provided new features to support various user groups, including business, creative, legal, finance and management. At the same time, WestEnd focused on improving our client’s engagement with their licensee partners by providing a secure external portal to allow unlimited licensee users the capability for self-administration of royalties, product approvals, factory compliance and product planning tasks.

As a result, WestEnd delivered a transformative project for our client to leverage Workspace as a single solution that manages most of its critical business activities while greatly improving visibility, efficiency and growth. Key aspects of the solution include: Product licensing and media distribution contract administration; Accounting transactions including guarantees, royalties, invoices, and payments; Design and approval workflows for new products and marketing material; Factory compliance, brand planning and line list scheduling tools; On-demand internal reports and dashboards for management.