Universal Music implements the Invenio Procure to Pay solution
Universal Music Group (UMG) is the world’s leading music company. Since their incorporation in 1934, they now own and operate a broad array of businesses engaged in recorded music, music publishing, merchandising and audiovisual content in more than 60 countries. With its recent acquisition of EMI, UMG has now consolidated its dominant position in the music market.
Universal Music Group and Invenio
Invenio have been working with UMG since 2010 on multiple projects including their SAP migration to HANA, SAP rollout to new countries, Supply Chain on SAP, COPA redesign, SAP Finance rollout internationally, Solution Manager CHaRM implementation, integration developments and support, as well as their SAP Finance global support to name a few.
The Business Challenges
UMG implemented a single global instance of the SAP FICO (finance and controlling) model for its financial reporting, however, the procurement and implementation of this system was widely distributed across various local systems. Within this system over 7000 users were involved in the P2P (procure to pay) process, all working with over 130,000 suppliers worldwide. The sheer volume of users made the administration and control of purchasing highly time consuming and inefficient.
In order to manage this process more effectively, UMG were keen to outsource supplier data management back to the suppliers as a cost saving measure, as well as bringing in better commitment tracking with clear visibility on spend and the ability to enforce strict budget controls. They had found traditional SAP solutions cost prohibitive in the past, and integrating their current system with third party tools had quickly become unmanageable. This left UMG struggling to handle massive quantities of purchasing data and budgets that quickly spun out of control.
Invenio's Solution
It was at this point that UMG implemented the Invenio P2P solution. Built on the existing SAP platform, this solution was available at a fraction of the cost of more traditional systems. It is tightly integrated with budgeting functionalities, allowing them to implement a ‘no budget, no spend’ policy that could be easily enforced by management. An easy to follow and simple workflow process allowed UMG to dramatically improve compliance throughout the entire P2P process. With the addition of a secure, web-based tool for mobile, this pushed the responsibility of supplier data and transaction maintenance back to the suppliers in ‘self-service’ mode.
The Results
This Invenio P2P solution has now been rolled out into nine countries, including 4 of the biggest territories for UMG – America, Japan, Germany and France. Since integration, more than 4000 internal users have been working successfully with this simple, user-friendly solution. Invenio have also started the supplier on-boarding process, with enthusiastic feedback from major territories so far. Over the next year, the solution will be rolled out to eight more countries in order to cover 90% of UMG’s global business.
With all of their global purchasing data in one place, UMG has much greater visibility on spend, allowing them to enforce tighter budgetary control and effective supplier management – all of which leads to higher profitability within the business. UMG has also seen significant improvement in supplier relationships since the rollout of this solution, as it allows them much higher levels of visibility and understanding throughout the process. The administration burden of the entire P2P process has reduced significantly, saving thousands of man hours on administrative tasks that are now better utilised within the business.