How Sony optimized workflows and reporting
Table of contents
Sony Network Entertainment (SNE) needed robust reporting features for its content offerings — a key reason it chose Nutrient Workflow. The result: workflow costs reduced by more than 30 percent, process times cut in half, and positive ROI in just three months.
Background
Sony Network Entertainment (SNE) is a digital entertainment platform offering music, movies, games, and more across connected devices through a single account. Because it promises “quick and convenient” entertainment to millions of customers, the storefront must stay up to date with the latest content as soon as it becomes available.
As the service launched and added new features, the company’s Content Operations group found itself increasingly in need of better metrics, more detailed reporting, and greater visibility into its workflow.
Sony was looking for
- A request management system with robust reporting features
- A solution that would capture metrics across the team
- A software company that would not only demonstrate the solution’s capabilities, but also provide step-by-step guidance on implementation
- A solution that could be tailored to the team’s workflow and operations requirements without building a system from scratch
Use Nutrient Workflow to automate reporting and metrics customized to your business.
Why Nutrient Workflow?
Process Improvement Analyst Mallory Manke and her team chose Nutrient Workflow primarily for its robust reporting features and what the team saw during the initial evaluation. “Our hope was that Nutrient Workflow would finally allow us to capture metrics across our team,” Manke said.
“The support resources were a huge reason as well: We’re not only told what Nutrient Workflow can do, but they explained how to make it happen,” she continued. “This gives us control over the reports and workflows to make them effective for our team, rather than being stuck with out-of-the-box features. And the idea that we could submit functionality requests for features we wanted was very exciting!”
“We were extremely limited with our previous workflow tool, with little-to-no support from the software company, and we had no visibility into our throughput.”
The Nutrient Workflow solution
SNE’s integration specialists began exporting reports on open requests into Excel. Using an algorithm, the team prioritizes requests based on related information within a ticket rather than arbitrary due dates. Manke used the general structure of the workflows created during SNE’s evaluation period and built on top of those. Her team was trained on the system and started using it in April of that year.
The Content Operations department’s workflows serve as communication between two groups within the team: Partner Operations submits instructions to the Metadata and Storefront Operations group for data entry into the content management system.
SNE also chose Nutrient Workflow’s cloud solution, which provides full functionality without the need to install and maintain software or manage server infrastructure.
The benefits
Although the team processes about the same number of requests (50–60 each month) as before implementing Nutrient Workflow, the processes are much more intuitive and transparent.
“We’re continuing to move more and more processes over,” Manke shared. “Most users find Nutrient Workflow clean and easy to use. Many initial suggestions and wish lists were implemented with the new system. Features such as the discussion tab and comments are very popular!”
“This has been a colossal improvement for our team. We’re a smarter operation — and this is an achievement we’ve been working toward for years.”
SNE has streamlined its processes within the Content Operations team as more workflows are handled and available for tracking via Nutrient Workflow. Managers have greater visibility into what the team is working on, and operators have a more consolidated resource for task assignments.
ROI
Nutrient Workflow’s team has supported SNE in maximizing its reporting capabilities, and the company has recently begun extracting and analyzing data. “Once we get a better grasp on our throughput and can understand where and how we’re spending our time, we’ll be in a better place in terms of planning for future initiatives,” Manke said. “We’re on our way, and this — along with exporting the reports to Excel with the algorithm — means Nutrient Workflow is definitely a success.”
Conclusion
The Content Operations department at SNE has more than 100 employees in its Los Angeles and London offices currently using the system. “Our main focus was always to find replacement workflow software specifically for our team, but we’re interested in expanding across additional teams within our organization as well,” said Manke.
Currently, 15 different processes are set up in Nutrient Workflow to categorize requests, though instructions vary for each submission. Metadata and Storefront Operations uses Nutrient Workflow to submit work within its own group, specifically for recurring merchandising updates across the storefront. The Marketing team also submits requests to Metadata and Storefront Operations to alert the team of content available for promotions.
SNE will continue to evaluate the data it’s tracking to decide its next steps with Nutrient Workflow. “We’ve discussed with additional teams within our department about adopting the system, possibly in Los Angeles, Foster City, and Tokyo,” Manke said. “The ultimate goal is for all communicating teams to be on the same tool.”
