PCI and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment - An Approach to Increasing Operational Effectiveness

Sony Pictures Entertainment's global operations encompass motion picture production and distribution, television programming and syndication, home video acquisition and distribution, operation of studio facilities, development of new entertainment technologies and distribution of filmed entertainment in 67 countries worldwide.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment (a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment) distributes SPE and acquired third-party theatrical and non-theatrical product on DVD and videocassette to the worldwide home entertainment market. Among the more than 2,500 film titles in SPHE's catalog are SPIDER-MAN (the fastest-selling DVD in SPHE history), CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, MEN IN BLACK II, PANIC ROOM, ALI, BLACK HAWK DOWN, AMERICA'S SWEETHEARTS, STUART LITTLE, A KNIGHT'S TALE, SNATCH, CHARLIE'S ANGELS and THE PATRIOT; and such film classics as BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI, DR. STRANGELOVE and LAWRENCE OF ARABIA.

The situation

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has developed very mature business processes to meet their operational goals and objectives. To meet these goals, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has highly modified and enhanced the software supporting these processes and now faces challenges with supporting the software. In order to continue improving their operations; issues of higher operating costs, the ability to embrace new technology, and less productivity in their operational systems, must be addressed. The executive team of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment would like to decrease the risk to operational systems, increase the ability to adopt new processes and position them to implement new technologies that enhance operations.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment currently runs Oracle EnterpriseOne Xe for Financials, Distribution, and Manufacturing. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment also utilizes the EnterpriseWorld environment for processing FASTRS, Worldwriters, and batch processing. In order to provide increased functionality and efficiency, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment plans to upgrade to Oracle EnterpriseOne 8.10 to facilitate better management of their operations and allow Sony to be on the most current release.

Solution

To address the situation, Sony Home Pictures Entertainment selected PCI to conduct an assessment of their current applications and technical configurations. As a prerequisite to the assessment, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment determined that it would be of significant benefit to conduct EnterpriseOne 8.10 net change workshops to Sony’s application managers. Providing EnterpriseOne 8.10 net change knowledge transfer prior to the assessment allowed (1) the application managers to identify new/enhanced functionality to leverage; (2) equip Sony functional resources (in conjunction with PCI consultants) during the assessment to analyze and
recommend the best approach to handling modified applications and custom objects. Additionally, a technical foundation net change workshop was conducted to educate Sony on the enhanced HTML and toolset functionality.

In addition to EnterpriseOne 8.10 net change workshops, Profit Concepts recommended that Sony Pictures Home Entertainment conduct business process workshops for each of the application areas (Finance, Distribution, Manufacturing) to transfer knowledge to Profit Concepts consultants. This activity proved to be invaluable during the assessment as we (SPHE and PCI) analyzed the current EnterpriseOne Xe and EnterpriseWorld configurations and determined the optimal approach for Sony’s evolving business practices going forward.

After the assessment was conducted, the solution proposed for Sony Pictures Home Entertainment was formulated around an Upgrade of J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne Xe/World to J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne 8.10. The proposed upgrade will place Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in a position to receive valuable vendor support for their operational systems. The upgrade required extensive work to existing modifications/enhancements to meet the standards required by the upgrade. During the upgrade process, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment could potentially leverage the effort to incorporate new available processes. In addition, an opportunity to upgrade the technology could position Sony Pictures Home Entertainment for reduced support costs and a greater focus by maintaining fewer systems with increased support.
The value to be gained by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in employing this solution is enormous.

Benefits / ROI

The value to be gained by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment in employing the upgrade solution is tremendous:

1. Reduction in operating expenses.
2. Deployment of current technologies
3. Increased Productivity
4. Reduced Risk to Critical Processes
5. Increased Operational Productivity
6. Integration of new software functionality

Enviroment

J.D. Edwards EnterpriseOne Xe running on IBM AS400.