With a client base anchored by the major Hollywood studios, ZOO produces DVDs and Blu-ray disks for the full range of movies and entertainment, games, and educational programs. The recent acquisition of Scope Seven, a media production and design company based in the U.K., meant that ZOO would be able to offer clients turnkey production services in addition to custom software solutions. As a result, ZOO's home-grown project management and tracking system had become inadequate for costing up to 200 projects every month, many of which are highly complex and must be localized in multiple languages.
"Since Scope Seven is a public company, we needed better, more accurate data to support financial reports to shareholders," said Duncan Wain, COO of ZOO Digital. "We had to get a better handle on all of the data necessary for job costing, resource management, and capacity analysis, not just for shareholder accountability, but to help us operate more profitably."
After reviewing a host of potential solutions, ZOO chose ScheduALL as its new enterprise system to consolidate and manage all project cost data as well as track and manage media assets. ScheduALL enables managers to capture and cost every aspect of a project involving multiple engineers and designers working in the U.S. and the U.K., and requiring localization for many different markets. Managers can use ScheduALL's reporting capabilities to view, on a daily basis, how actual costs are running against the originally quoted price for a job — a critical requirement since ZOO is pioneering many new design and production capabilities for which there is no pricing precedent. ZOO is currently implementing functionality that will enable ScheduALL to roll up cost data from 16 project categories and import it into the accounting system, where the data can feed into quarterly reports to shareholders on the fiscal health of the company.
"At the end of the day, our business is all about maintaining our margins as our clients continue to go into cost-cutting mode. ScheduALL didn't overpromise technologies they didn't have available, unlike other vendors, and we knew they would play a critical role in our ability to appropriately price each project to ensure maximum profitability," said Wain. "With the push of a button, I can get an instant picture of how each project is doing against its budget and we can make adjustments accordingly, or I can get a full snapshot of the entire company's performance."
ZOO is also using ScheduALL to keep track of assets. Replacing a home-grown library system that had become expensive and unwieldy to maintain, ScheduALL's Media Manager module enables ZOO to track and manage the location and status of every film and video asset under the company's control. Since assets within Media Manager are automatically associated with the project work order in ScheduALL, ZOO engineers can always be assured that they are accessing the correct assets, such as film masters, to complete a job. The system also streamlines ZOO's ability to conduct security audits for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the film studios, which have strict requirements for ensuring the security of their masters.
"ZOO Digital is addressing the issue many production businesses are facing today: how to stay profitable as their entertainment industry clients continue to cut costs," said Joel Ledlow, CEO of ScheduALL. "We're pleased that ZOO chose ScheduALL to help the company make pricing and costing decisions based on real-time data, to deliver maximum profits out of every project."
More information about ScheduALL and its software solutions is available online at www.scheduall.com.
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About ZOO Digital Group
ZOO Digital Group plc is a provider of creative media transformation services and software. ZOO is focused on the worldwide creative media production markets and in particular video and print production for entertainment, games and education applications, with customers including major Hollywood studios and other producers and publishers of video-based consumer products. ZOO's services are built on its proprietary patented software and enable customers to reduce considerably the costs and time to market of regionalized home entertainment titles and marketing campaigns across multiple territories and across a wide range of applications and formats, including printed materials, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, Video on Demand, interactive games and broadcast. For more information, visit www.zoodigitalgroup.com.
About ScheduALL
ScheduALL is the leading provider of enterprise resource management (ERM) software for the broadcast and media industry. With more than 1,200 worldwide clients within the broadcast, satellite, and production facilities, ScheduALL is clearly recognized as the partner of choice for operational management software solutions.
ScheduALL's software offers comprehensive workflow and resource management capabilities that enable clients to optimize personnel, resource, and bandwidth utilization in a way that directly translates into increased productivity and ROI. ScheduALL's modular approach and scalable product sets provide a collaborative platform for users in the broadcast, production, post-production, satellite/network transmission, and newsroom environments. ScheduALL clients include BBC, FOX News Network, The Associated Press, IntelSat, Turner Studios, Mediaset, CBC, ABC Australia, RTL, and NewSkies Satellites. More information is available at www.scheduall.com.
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