RTP (State Owned Network in Portugal) has been a GO inside client for more than 20 years and heavy – user of GMediaSuite since then. Following the implementation of SAP at RTP, the need for ‘communication’ between both tools became obvious.
Financial department needed to keep track of production costs in real time. After the integration RTP started to “manage more than 130.000 transactions per month’. At the same time, ‘it ceased to have paper moving around from one department to another […] and now, desks are almost paper free.’
Fernando Albuquerque highlights the main benefits: ‘currently people from operations ‘talk’ to the financial area or with HR directly and in real time.’ User’s satisfaction levels are remarkable. ‘For the company, mainly for the members of different departments and the board, it means higher degree of control, in real-time, over everything that is going on with tv production, related to cost, profits and management control.”
INTRODUCTION
RTP (state owned network in Portugal) has been a GO inside client for more than 20 years and heavy-user of GMediaSuite since then. As the number of channels broadcasted grows and the production e ort enlarges, the need for more accurate information and further integration between departments becomes obvious.
Production managers need to ‘talk’ to the HR area and vice-versa; financial management needs updated information from the previous two; and all the company needs to share information in a reliable and efficient way.
THE PROBLEM
Altough RTP was already a heavy-user of GMediaPlan, it felt the need to get more integration between GMediaPlan and SAP, “… to facilitate all the tasks related to budgeting, awareness of costs and purchases, real expenses of each category, production costs and invoices, etc.” – according to Fernando Albuquerque, Systems and Technology Director at RTP.
Financial information was managed only at the end of each month, hindering the e ciency of planning and management of production, causing delays on the accounting process. In the best of worlds, the financial department would have access to production costs in real time, in order to know both the actual expenses and the compromised ones. At RTP this process was managed manually, based on copies of billing invoices from customers.
It was urgent and mandatory to implement a system that could cross the planning data with the financial department.
THE SOLUTION
Up to then, RTP used to manually update all the fi nancial information related to internal processes of daily management. According to Fernando Albuquerque –
“Only at the end of the month, when the bookkeping was done, we could know the real costs and profit, who had bought what by how much. ” This way the company was lagging behind in terms of operational and financial agility.
From the very beginning, one of the main concerns of Fernando Albuquerque, was to understand to which degree SAP could be integrated with GMediaPlan, in real time in order to reproduce in SAP all the transactions and documents generated from GMediaPlan.
“It was necessary to do specific technical developments, so that GMediaPlan could ‘talk’ to SAP PI and with SAP ERP and vice-versa.’, explains Fernando Albuquerque. After the implementation, GMediaPlan started to manage more than 30 critical processes of the company, handled by more than 300 people that needed to be permanently connected. ‘GMediaPlan manages thousands of transactions in the SAP environment, in a total of more than 130.000 per month on average.’, states this RTP director.
The process has become more e. cient, in the words of the Systems and Technology Director: ‘Today we have access to all the information on-line and in real time. There’s no more paper flying around from one department to another, to be signed by the different managers and there’s almost no more paper on desks. As soon as a new invoice comes in, the people to whom it is related are able to know immediately.’
DESCRIPTION OF THE VALUE PROPOSITION
RTP soon realized the great benefits of this integrated solution, both in terms of process simplification and control, but also as a considerable improvement to
communication between the several areas of the company.
Fernando Albuquerque highlights the main benefits: ‘Currently people from operations ‘talk’ to the financial area or with HR directly and in real time.’ This process allowed RTP to ‘Have a better view and greater control over budgets, by having a better knowledge of responsibilities with third-parties and vice-versa, in real time.’ – added Fernando Albuquerque.
User’s satisfaction levels are remarkable. The information became accessible to everyone at the company, according to login permission levels. This allows faster response to work orders, greater control over daily tasks, and signifi cant improvements in the relationship with clients and suppliers.
‘For the company, mainly for the members of different departments and the board, it means higher degree of control, in real-time, over everything that is going on with TV production, related to cost, profi ts and management control.’, concluded the Systems and Technology Director of RTP.
CUSTOMER PROFILE
RTP (state owned broadcaster in Portugal) celebrated its fiftieth anniversary in 2007. During these last 50 years, Portugal witnessed many changes, broadcasted to people’s homes by RTP, on a daily basis. From 1957 to 1992, RTP was the incumbent broadcaster in Portugal.
Even after the privatization of the media sector in Portugal, RTP has kept a dominant position in the market, elbowing for the second position in share, and with operational income above 308.6 million euros (2010).
Nowadays RTP broadcasts more than 20 TV and Radio channels, including national, international and online coverage.
