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SEMINAR - System 7 Implementation Secrets - 23 September
TOPICS
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BearingPoint Consulting - Best Practices in System 7 Implementation
System 7 Installation Guide
System 7 Version 1.4 - Advances in IP Contract Administration
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
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PUBLISHERS
:
Books, Magazines, Newspapers, Music
ENTERTAINMENT
:
Film, Television, Cable, Live Events, Sports
CONSUMER PRODUCTS
:
Automotive, Toys, Apparel, Animation, Video Games
Contract Administrators, Financial Managers, Information Systems Project
Managers, Business Process Consultants
PRESENTED BY
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Peter Gallagher ,
Manager
BearingPoint Consulting (formerly KPMG Consulting), Media and
Entertainment Practice
-
Adam Lefkowitz,
System Implementation Manager
Jaguar Consulting , Software Developer
TIME AND PLACE
9:30 AM to 12:30 PM, Tuesday 23 September 2003
Registration opens at 9:00 AM, Refreshments served
Mid-town Manhattan (venue to be announced)
Seminar is no charge. Registration is at
www.jaguartc.com/seminars
.
Jaguar
Consulting (www.jaguartc.com),
the world's
leading provider of Intellectual Property Systems and the innovation-focused
BearingPoint Media and Entertainment Practice
(www.bearingpoint.com) are combining
to present an exceptional seminar designed to look beneath the covers at the
realities and opportunities of Intellectual Property Administration and
Finance Systems. Jaguar success stories include NBA, NBC, MGM, National
Geographic Society, Hallmark Entertainment, Sesame Workshop and many other
leaders in intellectual property licensing.
BearingPoint ( www.bearingpoint.com
)
will discuss real
world experience in implementing System 7 Universal Rights Management at one
of the world's largest consumer products and television licensors. Peter
Gallagher and his team will discuss their adaptation of BearingPoint's
standard implementation procedures to accommodate the unique requirements of
a contract-driven financial system. Particular attention will be paid to
lessons learned that are applicable to all intellectual property-specific
systems projects.
Jaguar will present the latest version of System 7. Particular attention
will be paid to advanced contract administration features, such as
context sensitive
redlining
, that further transcend the historical status quo for contract rights
management systems. System 7's unique
integrated
accounts receivable functionality
provides an
exceptional range of pivoting and drill down options that summarize and
explode transactions by asset, territory, right and distribution channel in
an elegant manner
completely
unavailable in any other system.
Module Review - Contract Administration
Contract
Administration forms the core of the intelligent enterprise. Most
businesses, when they look beyond the repetitive nature of their daily
transactions, recognize that their character is defined by the contracts
that they have in force. These contracts define their economic relationships
with business partners, customers, legal entities, industry groups and
personnel resources. Taken as a whole, contracts, not the assets for which a
company may be known, define the potential for success and the exposure to
failure that are most important to the owners of that organization. The
assets are tangible and can have valuations assigned to their historic
performance and future prospects, but the daily business of realizing those
values is strictly controlled by the
contracts that
define that asset's economic relationship with the business.
The unique power of System 7 is the ability to
capture and
synchronize all of the contracts that affect a business' present and future
exploitation opportunities.
This means that regardless of whether the contract is expense or revenue
generating, direct or indirect, System 7 captures the key financial, right
and date information that brings it to life. Contract Intelligence means
that properly capturing and organizing this data is just the beginning.
Understanding that data, while providing tools that process it, analyze it,
correlate it, share it and manage it, marks the System 7 difference between
merely getting by, and genuine pride in a job well done.
Contract Administration gives control to the people who need it most, the
administrators, the accountants and the lawyers. Each group has its own
special needs that must be met in order for them to support the vision and
workflow of the entire organization. Calendaring that is driven both by
known dates and controlled by an unlimited number of interrelated contingent
events is a must. Revenue allocations and performance milestones that can be
made completely dynamic, according to real world achievements,
enable finance to
forecast and maintain accurate expectations of the financial impact of each
contract
. Contract
generation, negotiation
redlining
and automated
approval workflows tie together disparate decision makers in a streamlined
and fully recorded process.
Universal Contract Database
Previous Jaguar systems generations were designed with separate
internal file systems for each major type of contract (Acquisition,
Creative and Sales ) in order to maximize performance, security
and stability under earlier software technologies. System 7's reliance on a
Relational Database and the arrival of multiple gigahertz servers and
workstations has allowed the seamless consolidation of these disparate
agreements into a single Universal Contract Database subsystem
capable of
understanding and administering all types of contracts.
The primary purpose of System 7 is to manage and process Intellectual
Property Agreements, however, Jaguar's clients also enter other types of
agreements that benefit from centralized intelligent administration, such as
executive employment agreements, property leases, location releases… the
list is virtually endless. System 7 security enables complete privacy of all
sensitive agreements and information from prying eyes through carefully
designed functional and departmental filters.
The benefits of contract integration are fourfold:
1.
Contract Intelligence
reports by Asset, Territory, Right, Distribution Channel, Contractual Event,
Party, Administrator, Negotiator, Division, Company, Salesperson or Agent
that cut across all types of contracts to give clear, precise answers to
important questions.
2. Centralized Administration
ensures that Options, Expirations, Obligations, Payments, Triggers,
Financial Reporting, Amendments, Materials Servicing, Billings, Recoupment,
Royalties and Communications are handled with consistent professionalism
throughout the contract lifecycle.
3. Consistent User Interfaces
make cross-training and collaboration between functional departments
convenient and practical. Standard procedures and shared expertise ensure
that personnel promotions, emergencies and reassignments do not cause
important contractual responsibilities to be overlooked.
4. Universal Document Assembly
of all types of agreements from a single database of Templates,
Antecedent Agreements and Standard Terms and Conditions
encourages both cross-corporate standardization and maximum opportunities
for fully informed creative legal writing. Instant comparison of clauses
from any agreement type helps to maximize consistency and stimulate
innovative negotiating positions based upon the accomplishments of others
within the organization.
One-Step Contract Revisions
Multiple year, multi-dimensional licensing contracts involve many
best estimate projections as to the nature and timing of future events.
Introduction dates for source intellectual property, primary retail
marketplace success, sequential release windows, contingent producer rights
availability, aggressive royalty payment formulas, unrealistic performance
guarantee commitments, changes in licensee ownership, foreign currency
devaluations, and many other contractual criteria, may cause a valued long
term relationship to fall out of balance over time.
The most common response to unmet expectations is to renegotiate the
contract to better reflect current realities and updated forecasts. Assets
are added or deleted. Royalty formulas are revised. Guarantees are adjusted.
Payment schedules are extended. Expiration dates are postponed. Territories
are redefined. Distribution channels are broadened (or narrowed). Product
rights are clarified. Contractual parties are updated. This list of
possibilities is truly endless, especially when the agreement includes
dozens of titles and hundreds of combinations of territories, rights and
distribution channels. Every one of these changes could result in a
credit
applied to an invoice, reversal of recognized revenue, reapplication of cash
receipts, updated fulfillment materials, corrected participations payments,
currency gains or losses, issuance of new invoices, adjustment to accounts
receivable balances, newly available rights,
or what is in effect an entirely new agreement.
Proper management of contract revisions requires a single entry point.
Every possible scenario must be easily recorded. The impact of these changes
is then automatically registered throughout the system. Rescheduled
contractual events are realigned with the payments and invoicing that they
trigger. Unapplied Cash is reassigned with a minimum of investigation and
effort. New invoice schedules are instantly reflected in invoice printing
runs. Deferred Revenue is restructured to report a 100% accurate General
Ledger representation of the new reality.
Automated Option Activation
Unlike Contract Revisions, which are (theoretically!) unplanned
adjustments to ongoing contractual relationships,
Options are
officially anticipated major contractual events.
Options include extensions to the existing term (usually based upon
identified success criteria), reductions to the existing term (usually based
upon a perceived failure to execute a business plan), or the grant of
additional rights in an expanding relationship. From the contract rights
management perspective, the possibilities start to become unmanageable when
Options alter the term of just a subset of the original grant of rights, or
simultaneously involve reductions, expansions and extensions of various
rights in the agreement.
The key to successfully describing, maintaining and activating an option
is to segregate it as a data entry point within a contract and to capture it
in a format that is consistent with other types of deal points within the
agreement. Options recorded as a single text block are useless to the
ongoing operation of a Contract Rights Management system except as a
reference on a printed form. Their contents merely become raw material for a
purely manual Contract Revision. In contrast,
System 7 captures this information in detail and sees the Option as pending
granted rights and payments. The Option waits in an inactive state, ready to
impact Rights, Payments and Obligations information the moment it is
exercised.
System 7's unique
Granted Rights Deal Point subsystem, allows an unlimited number of active
and inactive (Options) terms to be held within the database, available for
reporting, but without other effect until triggered. Options then
potentially
update Rights Availability, Advance Payment Schedules, Royalty Guarantee
Milestones, Key Contractual Events, Term Begin, End and Sell Off dates,
Collision Testing, and Release Windows
without further
manual intervention.
Unlimited Granted Rights Configurations
Other than perhaps Payment Schedules, the most essential component of
any intellectual property creation or licensing contract is detailed
specification of exploitation rights granted. All contracting parties demand
maximum clarity in the language describing what they are and are not allowed
to do. Lost financial investments, expensive legal disputes and missed
opportunities are all potential consequences of accidental
misunderstandings. As a result, unlimited ingenuity is applied during the
negotiation of key business terms to develop and document a balanced long
term relationship. The ability of contract administration departments to
conveniently supervise the fulfillment of these terms is, of necessity,
secondary.
Administratively, the challenges inherent in this situation are magnified
when a variety of Term Dates and Exclusivity Windows are incorporated within
the agreement. Library Sales that involve dozens or hundreds of
mature assets, each one wholly or partially encumbered by previous licensing
agreements is a common example. The complexity of Output Deals , due
to unresolved date contingencies, places even greater demands on
Administrators to track and resolve the impacts of loosely defined future
events. Some of these events include initial home market release, final
production rights clearance, distribution budget approval, governmental
import authorization, technical acceptance testing, or product integration
certification. The results are
multi-dimensional
agreements that each contain a complex patchwork of Asset, Territory, Right
and Distribution Channel master classifications and sub-categories.
The System 7 solution subdivides the Grant of Rights into as many
Deal Points as necessary to properly express every situation. The
traditional systems approach grants all rights for precisely the same term
and then identifies exceptions. This arbitrary abstraction produces
unsignable agreements and incomprehensible reports.
System 7's
positive grant of rights corresponds to the vision of the original
negotiators, including the ability to define multiple exclusive,
non-exclusive and co-exclusive windows for each unique Asset-Right
Combination represented within the agreement.
About
Jaguar News
Jaguar News is published periodically for the
purpose of maintaining communications with Jaguar’s clients, prospective
clients and other parties interested in the field of
Intellectual Property
Contract Rights Management. Jaguar Consulting was founded in 1985
for the express purpose of designing, developing, installing and
supporting Intellectual Property Software
Solutions.
Clients include Alliance-Atlantis Communications,
Cinar, DIC Entertainment, Explore International, Flextech Television,
Goodtimes Video, Hallmark Entertainment, Harmony Gold, HIT Entertainment,
Jim Henson Productions, Lions Gate Entertainment, Major League Baseball,
MGM, NBA, NBC, National Geographic Society, Nelvana, Sesame Workshop,
Southern Star, Warner Home Video and WNBA.
System 7 Universal Rights Management is
Jaguar’s seventh generation software product. It is an all-new design
created specifically to bring contract rights management technology to all
forms of intellectual property, including patents,
copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets and
permissions. This groundbreaking system features a
Universal Contract Database, Multi-Level Rights Inheritance, a
fully-configurable Custom Rights Framework, and Integrated Rights
and Royalties Management. System 7 is available in
the following software modules: Intranet Portal, Contract Administration,
Rights and Restrictions, Workflow Management, Revenue Accounting, Royalties
Receivable
and Participations Payable.
Further information including
a white paper, System 7 Fundamentals, and a
test drive of System 7 Intranet is available at
http://www.jaguartc.com/system7.
Jaguar Consulting Inc.
Pasadena,
California
Lincoln Center, New York
London, United Kingdom
For additional information: Visit http://www.jaguartc.com
Or contact Jaguar at 626/796-1955 or
info@jaguartc.com
If you wish to discontinue your receipt of Jaguar
News, simply reply to this email with “Unsubscribe” in the subject line.
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