Fast forward to the future of affiliate revenue management
Ovation TV is an independent television and digital media company dedicated to celebrating and supporting all forms of art and culture. Ovation selectively curates and airs arts-related series, specials, documentaries, and films, along with an exciting lineup of Ovation original productions. Their network reaches an audience of over 50 million subscribers across cable, pay TV, satellite, and telco systems.
Managing the revenue, subscribers, and distributors associated with their network requires discipline across finance, accounting, affiliate sales, and other departments, in addition to solutions that facilitate collaboration among teams. Vice president of finance Joe Fankhauser and his team have faced numerous challenges in their efforts to streamline workflows.
Eventually, Revedia changed everything.
Modernization moves the needle
For years, Ovation utilized an on-premise system to manage affiliate revenue. Over time, the expense and hassle began to add up. Since users were required to log into a VPN to access distributor data, work could only be done as quickly as internal server speeds allowed. Upkeep and troubleshooting fell to Ovation’s internal IT resources.
In order to reconcile revenue, the Ovation finance team had to manually integrate data stored across multiple systems and validate the accuracy of their reports. That made monthly close particularly challenging, but recurring processes such as applying cash, entering remittances, and performing adjustments could be just as time-consuming. For an organization that needed to keep up with the fastmoving media industry, it was an untenable situation.
Joe knew that change was necessary. With so many distribution partners and varying carriage rates across their network, the Ovation finance team required more streamlined workflows, accurate reporting, and modern tooling to effectively manage it all. When he attended a SymphonyAI Media webinar on the capabilities of Revedia, he saw firsthand how a modern revenue solution could benefit his team.
Powering up with Revedia
Revedia was a revelation for the Ovation staff. Beginning with a seamless deployment, Joe’s team quickly saw efficiency improve.
“Migration was painless. Our team was up and running on Revedia
right away.”
Revedia’s user-friendly interface was a welcome sight. Previously, the Ovation finance team had been entering each distributor’s established carriage rate into their previous system manually, one at a time. Thanks to Revedia, they can now ingest rates across their network of distribution partners from a single screen, simultaneously.
In addition to the distribution rate flexibility, the Ovation team enjoys being able to perform their work from any location on the secure, cloud-based Revedia platform – a new requirement for many businesses in a COVID-19 environment.
Once data is ingested, Revedia’s intelligent automation gets to work. Built-in business logic helps Joe’s team keep track of the tasks they need to complete in a given period. Prior to closing out an accounting period, Revedia notifies users of any missing data (such as active agreement rates) or reconciliation issues and enables business managers to seamlessly identify how they are tracking for the accounting close period. Revedia’s anomaly detection also notifies users of any revenue or subscriber variances that could signal potential discrepancies in payments and subscriber counts so Ovation can accurately recognize revenue.
With data unified on a single platform, insight is more accessible than ever to finance and other departments. Joe’s team leverages Revedia’s built-in and custom reporting capabilities to provide stakeholders with relevant information so they can make their best decisions.
Benefits of Revedia for Ovation
- Optimized UI simplifies navigation and eliminates learning curve
- Cloud solution removes need for on-premise IT maintenance
- Data anomaly detection assures accurate revenue recognition
- Work securely from anywhere in support of COVID-19 work requirements
- Set multiple carriage rates for distributors simultaneously, not one-by-one
Optimization for Ovation
The benefits of switching to Revedia have been wide-ranging. Significant gains in data accuracy, revenue recognition, and workflow efficiency have validated Ovation’s decision to partner with SymphonyAI Media; by their calculations, workflow process has improved 20%.
“Revedia has enabled Ovation to optimize our affiliate finance operation. Automation speeds
up our processes, while built-in analysis delivers valuable insight.”
Looking forward, SymphonyAI Media’s ongoing investment in Revedia gives Joe and his team peace of mind that they made the right decision. Whether it’s new features such as AI-powered forecasting for linear distribution revenue or support for digital models such as FAST, continuous upgrades make Revedia a reliable long-term solution for organizations like Ovation.
As Ovation charts their future path and drives to meet their audience whenever and wherever they want to consume content, they do so with the confidence of an organization powered by SymphonyAI Media’s modern, futureproof Revedia platform.
To realize the specific benefits Revedia can bring to your business, contact us
to begin your proof-of-concept.
About SymphonyAI
SymphonyAI is building the leading enterprise AI company for digital transformation across the most important and resilient growth verticals, including retail, consumer packaged goods, finance, manufacturing, media, and IT service management. SymphonyAI verticals have many leading enterprises as clients. Since its founding in 2017, SymphonyAI has grown rapidly to 2,000 talented leaders, data scientists, and other professionals. SymphonyAI is an SAIGroup company, backed by a $1 billion commitment from Dr. Romesh Wadhwani, a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist.
