Sony Music Entertainment is a global recorded music company with a current roster that includes a broad array of both local artists and international superstars. The company features a vast catalog that comprises some of the most important recordings in history. It is home to premier record labels representing music from every genre, including Arista Records, BNA Records, Columbia Records, Epic Records, RCA Records, Sony Classical, Sony Music Latin, and Volcano Entertainment. Sony Music Entertainment is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America.
Challenges
When Sony Music Entertainment Inc. formed a joint venture with another music entity, it made for some major HR challenges. The two organizations had different enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, each with vastly different HR systems.
After initially trying to incorporate Sony Music Entertainment's HR data into the other company's existing ERP, HR leaders decided it would be more efficient to find a solution that provided a single platform for its human capital management.
Solutions
"We wanted to be experts of our own data," said Chuck Keck, Director of Payroll for Sony Music Entertainment. "We wanted something much less complicated and easier to manage than an ERP, and we knew there were many advantages to leveraging SaaS."
After reducing the list to three vendors, the team chose UKG Pro® as the company's new HCM platform.
With the SaaS platform from UKG, companies are better positioned to receive immediate benefits. SaaS solutions allow for rapid deployments at a much lower cost and enable greater operational efficiencies, especially compared with on-premise ERP systems.
"UKG's cloud technology has been a major plus for our processes and our overall business," said Keck.
Sony Music's organizational goals included improved efficiencies with employee and manager self-service, more robust reporting, global reporting capabilities, and broader functionality in the areas of compensation, benefits, and strategic employee management.
The entertainment company wanted to roll out the solution rapidly and wanted the change to be transparent to its 2,300 employees. While other companies have required a year or longer to implement an HCM platform, Sony Music Entertainment was able to adopt it more quickly — needing just six months for the launch.
Keck noted that the internal Sony team working on the project received accolades from executives, who were impressed by how smooth and efficient the rollout was.
"Senior management was surprised that we could deploy an HCM solution that quickly, Keck said. "Executives fully supported the move to Pro, and the transition was seamless to our employees. A casual observer wouldn't even know we had made the switch. UKG's resources were great, and its support teams were very dedicated."
“UKG Pro is definitely a better, faster, and more cost-efficient platform to manage our workforce data. It is exactly what we wanted with an HCM solution.”
ChUck Keck
Director of Payroll
Results
Sony Music Entertainment is using Pro's web-based benefits enrollment as well as role-based access for managers and employees. With these self-service capabilities, employees have immediate access to their own information, the ability to print their W-2 forms, and more.
Pro also provides employees with a 24/7 web portal where they view personal information; update contact information, data related to beneficiaries, and changes in life events; and enroll in benefits online, including annual open enrollment.
Keck said that employees find Pro's self-service interface intuitive, logical, and easy to navigate — which means a very minimal learning curve for all users.
"Pro is definitely a better, faster, and more cost-efficient platform to manage our workforce data," Keck said. "It is exactly what we wanted with an HCM solution."
