Talk to us
  • CASE STUDY | MUSIC PUBLISHING / ENTERTAINMENT & MEDIA

4M+ songs administered. 1,500 hours saved every year.

Sony Music Publishing, the world’s number one music publishing company, replaced an email-and-spreadsheet intake process with an enterprise service management platform built on Jira Service Management. Trundl served as Solution Partner. The Global Copyright Administration team now runs publishing data intake from 35 global affiliate offices through a single service desk, and the model has spread across the business.

Talk to us
4M+ songs administered
1,500 hours saved each year
200+ automations built
1,000 users
2 new jobs created
  • ON THIS PAGE
Client Sony Music Publishing (SMP)
Industry Entertainment & Media
Users 1,000
Location North American headquarters, Nashville, TN
Solution Jira Service Management Cloud
Trundl Role Atlassian Solution Partner
Talk to us
  • THE CLIENT

Who is Sony Music Publishing?

Sony Music Publishing is the number one music publishing company in the world, administering a collection of more than four million songs. That collection grows by hundreds of thousands of new songs each year, generating billions of income lines across a wide range of sources. Tracking how each song is used, and making sure the right people are paid on time, depends on the technology and teams behind it.

  • THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE

An email inbox running a global publishing pipeline.

Up until 2020, the Global Copyright Administration team (GCA) handled publishing data intake with standard office software. A simple service desk built on Outlook rules and automations optimized parts of the process, but capability, capacity, and features fell short of what the business needed as request volume and complexity grew.
01

Email-Based Intake

35 global affiliate offices submitted their local publishing data to GCA by email, filtered onward through Outlook rules.

02

Limited Tracking

The GCA leg of the process was difficult to track and measure, generating follow-up work for both affiliates and the GCA team.

03

No Scalability

The process could not scale against a song collection growing by hundreds of thousands of titles each year.

04

Data Out of Reach

Volume and throughput data came from IT on request rather than being available to the team directly.

  • PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Out of the inbox. Into a service desk.

01

Streamline Request Management

Move enterprise service request management out of email and into a structured intake system for GCA and affiliates.

02

Build for Scale

Deploy a Cloud configuration that would support performance, remote work, and future growth without a later procurement cycle.

03

Automate at Volume

Access a greater volume of automation rules, a key requirement the legacy setup could not meet.

04

Establish Visibility

Give agents, affiliates, and leadership real-time view of queues, workload, and request status.

  • THE TRUNDL SOLUTION

MVP first, then land and expand

Trundl and GCA took an iterative approach: envision the possibilities, build a minimum viable product, then add to it. Over several months the two teams built an MVP service request platform called GCA Delivery Desk.
01

The MVP Build

Launched in spring 2020 with one workflow, one issue type, one form covering nine unique request types, and ten automations. Subtasks let team members expand on and delegate from a parent ticket.

02

The New Intake Process

Affiliates complete a brief intake form in under two minutes. GCA moves the request from Submitted to Accepted to In Progress to Done, with Reject and Suspend paths where needed. Affiliates track their own tickets and communicate through the desk.

03

Iterative Expansion

An agile cadence of backlog grooming, fortnightly review, and demo-led prioritization eased change management while adding automations for auto-assignment, dating, percentage-based transitions, and customer comments.

04

Marketplace Extensions

ScriptRunner added behavioral reminders preventing tickets from advancing before work was complete, alongside ProForma, Custom Charts for Jira, Queues, JEMH Cloud, and My Requests Extension.

  • DELIVERY HIGHLIGHTS

Quality, value, and speed.

QUALITY Adopted in weeks

GCA and affiliates embraced the new workflow quickly. Within weeks of launch, GCA Delivery Desk became a go-to tool in the team’s productivity suite.

TIME TO MARKET MVP in months

One workflow, nine request types, and ten automations live in spring 2020, then expanded iteratively rather than delivered as a single large build.

VALUE ADD 1,500 hours a year

More than 200 automations built to date. At two minutes saved per automation per day, that is close to 1,500 hours of operational savings annually.

Full visibility and tracking are at the fingertips of all agents and customers alike.

Alison Wood

Director, Global Copyright Administration, Sony Music Publishing
Read the full story on atlassian.com/customers/ sonymusic-publishing
  • RESULTS

Efficiency, headcount, and a model other teams asked for.

01

Operational Savings

Over 200 automations built to date, amounting to close to 1,500 hours of operational savings each year before accounting for context switching or report building.

02

Two New Roles

Real-time visibility into the created-versus-resolved resolution ratio supported a resourcing case that resulted in two new headcounts.

03

Workload Rebalancing

Changing a single automation can re-route requests and reduce workload by 25% almost immediately.

04

Expansion Across the Business

Legal took it for contract management, HR for employee onboarding, and Film and TV for productions. Global Analytics and the PMO followed for enterprise PPM. Finance and International A&R are next.
  • WHY IT MATTERS

A digital product, not a shared drive.

Before the change, teams worked from shared drives, spreadsheets, and email. Now they see their process as a digital product: a form, a queue, a dashboard, and a workflow. That shift made the value tangible and easier to understand, and it changed how teams talk to each other. Conversations now center on service requirements rather than personal requests.

For Sony Music Publishing, the flexibility and scale of the platform means confidence in handling another four million-plus songs as the brand and team grow.

  • FAQ

Frequently asked questions.

How large was the initial deployment?

The MVP launched in spring 2020 with a single workflow: one issue type, one form covering nine unique request types, and ten automations. The platform expanded iteratively from there to more than 200 automations.

Which Marketplace apps were used?

ProForma, Custom Charts for Jira, ScriptRunner for Jira, Queues for Jira Service Management, JEMH Cloud, and My Requests Extension.

Did automation reduce headcount?

No. Real-time visibility into resolution ratios strengthened the resourcing case, and two new roles were granted in IT and GCA within the first year.

How did other departments adopt it?

Business units saw the visibility GCA Delivery Desk provided and requested their own. Legal, Human Resources, Film and TV, Global Analytics, and the PMO have since deployed on the platform.