Success Story: Lions Gate Entertainment

In September 1999, Lions Gate Entertainment of Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto, New York and Los Angeles, took delivery of Jaguar's ACE, BATS, PIPELINE, SCOREBOARD and WRAP-UP modules. This investment was made to provide Lions Gate with the contract administration and revenue accounting core needed to support the ongoing rapid expansion of its business through corporate acquisitions and investment in film and television development. Acquisitions have included Cinepix, The Movie Group and most recently, Trimark Pictures.

Lions Gate Films is one of North America's most successful producers and distributors of independent motion pictures. Recent hits include AMERICAN PSYCHO and DOGMA. Lions Gate Television produces mini-series, movies-of-the-week, one-hour series and non-fiction programming for the North American and international marketplaces. The latest highlight is a one-hour dramatic series called MYSTERIOUS WAYS, which premiered on NBC on 24 July.

The implementation process started that same month with a three day series of on-site interviews in Toronto focused on clerical staff, department managers and senior executives whose work would be impacted by use of the system or its reports and queries. Mark Madeisky, entertainment industry systems consultant and Octavian Mitrea, Director of Information Services, supervised the interviews and guided the subsequent analysis and project planning process.

Concurrently, Lions Gate decided that the best way to ensure the success of the project was to create a Rights Licensing System Manager position solely dedicated to implementing and supporting their Jaguar system. Sandra Stoll then joined the company to fill that vital role. One of Sandra’s most important contributions has been developing and implementing company-wide procedures and guidelines. System users and non-users alike have found it essential to follow the resulting blueprint to ensure accurate information capture, optimal communication flow and a high performance data structure.

Contract data entry for Lions Gate Films International commenced in December 1999 and was completed in March 2000. More than 1,050 sales contracts and 100 acquisition contracts were entered and validated in less than 4 months!

Jaguar’s standard is to achieve at least one key management priority in the first 4 to 6 months of hands on work with the system. By going live with not only sales administration (including Availabilities) but also revenue accounting in such a short period, Lions Gate tied the 4 month record for a new system implementation set by the NBA back in 1997! In fact, the system has already been used to assist controllers and auditors with the fiscal 2000 year-end closing process.

Currently the Legal Department is busy abstracting agreements for the Canadian (English and French) and US (Film and Television) operating units. This process is expected to require 4-5 months. It uses a standard form drafted by Sandra to ensure that all of the data required by the system is captured on the first pass. Temporary data entry help will be added to expedite the effort, with Canadian (in Canadian $) and then US Films and US Television (in US$) contracts expected to be incorporated into live operation in short order.

After all of the divisions have been completely implemented, Sandra will continue to oversee the system and its users to ensure the quality of data input, provide ongoing support and keep the operation running like clockwork!

When asked about specific benefits, Lions Gate’s first response was that they are greatly benefiting from everything that this highly integrated system has to offer. They then talked about dramatic improvements in these key areas:

• Accurate Availability reporting. 
• Audit quality Aging and Cash Flow reports. 
• Scheduled Contract Invoice automation. 
• Precise tracking of contract term dates and invoice due dates. 
• Establish library re-sale values through historical analysis.

We would like to thank Sandra, Octavian and Mark for setting a standard for others to measure up to. They have shown once again that with the right resources and planning, Jaguar systems can be brought into live operation in short order.