Universal Music Case Study

UMG is the world's leading music company. It's global operations encompass the development, manufacture, marketing, sales and distribution of recorded music through a network of subsidiaries, joint ventures and licensees in 71 countries around the world, representing 98% of the global music market. UMG's businesses also include music publishing, and mail order music/video clubs.

Universal Music International is the division of UMG that operates in countries outside of North America.

UMG is the global market leader and the leader in 65% of the markets where it operates including the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Canada, and Australia. With over 12,000 employees worldwide, UMG leads the music industry in global sales with an estimated worldwide market share in 2002 of 24.4%.

The Challenge

Improving the turn-around of services and streamlining costs
Universal Music Group brought in Northampton-based software publishing house Invu to replace the costly and time-consuming paper-based invoicing system with an electronic document management and workflow system.

The success of the system has already been endorsed by Customs and Excise, which no longer requires the group to keep paper copies of it's VAT records. This has not only reduced storage costs but has also contributed towards the Government's plans to reduce paper consumption by 2005.

"We needed to connect remote sites, track invoices, improve the turn-around of our services and streamline costs."
Paul Williams, UK Systems Manager

UMG needed to ensure it adopted a system that met the initial criteria of efficiency and could be further adapted to fit in with global accounting.

The Benefits

Significant cost-savings
Invu's answer was it's Professional Series 250, a software package developed for a multi-user and networked environment, which was quickly developed and implemented to meet the criteria for invoice scanning, tracking and quick authorisation.

"The solution from Invu is delivering significant cost-savings, replacing the paper trail with a full audit-trail, removing the need to request copy invoices and a product which interfaces with our existing accounting packages."
Paul Williams, UK Systems Manager

Universal's Pierre Swart, the Invu administrator who helped specify the business requirements for the complete system goes on to say:

"Invu immediately showed it's expertise and the final product cannot be compared to anything currently on the market. The product was modified to fit in perfectly with our business requirements and is now fundamental to the business. We have users who say they cannot think how they operated before Invu."
says: Universal's Pierre Swart

UMG have over 100 users of Invu which is used for invoice scanning, tracking and quick authorisation. In addition Invu has been specifically developed to run off an Oracle server

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