M+E Daily

Reading, UK-based invenioLSI counts itself as the No. 1 independent SAP solutions provider in the public sector, and offers specialist skills in the media and entertainment sector, by bringing deep expertise combined with advanced technologies to enable organisations to modernise and be ahead of today’s business needs.

James Maysonet, VP of media and entertainment for invenioLSI, spoke with MESA about the goals of the company, why its invenioLSI Content Financials solution stands out in the industry, and how the company has weathered the pandemic.

MESA: Who is invenioLSI solutions and what are your goals in the M&E market?

Maysonet: invenioLSI is an award-winning global company with a long history of bringing SAP solutions to companies in the media, sports, and entertainment industry. Recognised as the world’s No. 1 independent SAP consultancy and implementation partner for public sector and services organisations, invenioLSI is a gold-level SAP partner and has earned the Partner Center of Expertise (PCOE) certification from SAP. This certification is awarded in recognition of SAP partners who have continuously delivered standardised, high-quality customer service and reliable support.

invenioLSI is fully international, with our EMEA headquarters near London and our North America headquarters in Waltham, Mass. Our flexible delivery model — with nearly 1,500 experts — ensures our global customer base benefits from high-quality engagements by delivering quicker time to value and by helping enterprises be more effective.

Our industry expertise, combined with our experience with implementing SAP solutions, allow us to deliver a tailored service to every customer, guiding them through this confluence of voluminous demand, complexity, margin protection and choke points. Given that invenioLSI is management-owned, our teams have direct access to leadership, and everyone is aligned to meet the goal of making our customers successful.

Our work is broad, but it has depth in managing some of the most complex change management situations, pushing teams forward with the technology, processes, and communication tools needed to be successful. We have driven measurable results for many media companies while having undertaken and delivered on projects that resulted in long, trusting relationships with our clients. Our objective is to deliver great results for your business.

Our goal is to grow in the U.S. M&E market by delivering targeted and value-added products and services, with our expertise in SAP, change management and analytics, we aspire to become a trusted resource servicing the industry. We are leveraging our SAP-certified team members globally and locally to work in partnership with the media, music, and video games communities.

MESA: The invenioLSI Content Financials solution promises to provide end-to-end visibility throughout production. What makes this offering stand out in the industry? What does it provide that other companies don’t?

Maysonet: Currently, the tools that manage financing, budgeting, and production are in dire need of advancement, as many of these tools and their processes are antiquated, not easily accessible, and lack the capability to manage the demands of today. Integration is key to solving the challenges, it always has been, however, only parts of the value chain have been automated and connected while the solutions have not been integrated.

Along the content value chain, there is a financial implication that is connected to each step in a very complex workflow. From the point of acquisitions to the point of distribution, and every stage in-between, all decisions have a financial impact, especially around production finance, budgeting, and accounting, that requires more real-time processing and visibility to manage overall budgets and decisions.

Current tools lack this capability. How can a company manage its financial risk if you don’t have this visibility?

invenioLSI’s Content Financials is an extension to the SAP ERP solution that delivers one single workflow across all applications connecting contracts, budgets, salary costs, travel costs, procurement costs and overheads before production, during production and through the post-capitalisation phases of the Content lifecycle.

The solution provides full transparency of the total cost while integrating with rights management and market trends software, delivering an effective way of managing the content financial chain.

There are solutions out there that track payroll and budgets but are not integrated with organisations. invenioLSI’s Content Financial product was built with design guidance from users to provide:

• Ease of use for production accountant
• Ease of training
• Intuitive user experience
• Clear features and functions for each action

The variability and complexity of the content production process are considered in the design of our Content Financial solution, ensuring a highly configurable solution that captures the details as well as the dynamic changes in deals, finance, and production.

MESA: What does invenioLSI offer in the areas of rights management and payments that’s unique in the M&E sector?

Maysonet: invenioLSI’s solution allows for multiple factors of ultimate revenue and ultimate costs, which provide insights into how any changes impact the overall budget.

We offer integration with rights management software for seamless tracking of content assets, content rights pricing, rights profitability analysis, contracting, billing and more. Today, many organisations have yet to create one workflow across those dimensions in one place. A complete view of the financial activities resulting from deals, distribution, changes in financial models, taxes and tax credits will offer decision-makers ease of information with the right inputs.

For example, we are currently witnessing the evolution of the theatrical model and streaming models. The contracts that are connected to each of those models are very complex and differ on rights, the value of payments and when they take place, and profitability. The demand for content has grown exponentially and tools today struggle because they are not fully integrated, resulting in delays. Deciding the proper model in discovery, at scale, is key for the viability of content owner, streamer, or aggregating aggregator.

MESA: What are some of invenioLSI’s favourite use-case examples (that you can share), where media and entertainment companies made especially good use of your services?

Maysonet: A major global music production group needed a single global instance of SAP Financials and Supply Chain, with integration to dozens of systems in preparation for an SAP S/4HANA upgrade.

invenioLSI was chosen to create a scalable solution for their 7,000-plus users worldwide, global vendors, global manufacturers/distributors and multi-regional tax requirements creating a unified enterprise architecture. invenioLSI integrated all systems and processes across the globe with content financials, with no major disruptions to the business.

MESA: How has the pandemic impacted invenioLSI’s business? In what ways has the company adjusted its services?

Maysonet: Our business is virtual, and we have subsidiaries in 11 countries. Pre-pandemic, we had already been leveraging our teams via video conference for years, so this was not a big change. However, we did lose the personal touch – reading the room and body language and connecting with our customers. Now we must work harder to create that connection virtually. We do this by adding fun elements into meetings and taking more breaks.

In fact, our business has continued to grow, increasing in size by over 40 percent year-on-year and executing a merger during the pandemic.

MESA: What’s next for invenioLSI? What advancements or added services can we expect from invenioLSI on the horizon?

Maysonet: We will be delivering the latest version of our product, based on SAP’s latest S/4HANA release. We will also be attending various MESA events and connecting with our audience through MESA’s M+E Daily. We will be holding webinars and virtual events to help our customers understand how they can integrate their financials across the production and post-production content workflows.

We welcome any and all inquiries from media professionals who want to understand what we can do to help them and their organisations. [email protected]