Sony Network Entertainment storefront moves to the cloud to improve workflow

Sony Network Entertainment (SNE) wanted to keep its storefront as up-to-date as possible with the latest content offerings. The Content Operations group also sought better metrics, more detailed reporting and a more visible throughput of its workflow.

Mallory Manke, process improvement analyst for Sony Network Entertainment, explains, “We were extremely limited with our previous workflow tool with little to no support from the software company and had no visibility into our throughput.”

After an evaluation period, Manke’s team chose Integrify Cloud Version 5.5 primarily because of its reporting features, and it was implemented in early 2012.

Manke says, “Our hope was that Integrify would finally allow us to capture metrics across our team. The support resources were a huge reason as well—we’re not only told what Integrify can do, but they explained how to make it happen. This allows us to have control over the reports and workflows to make them effective for our team and to not be stuck with just out-of-the-box features. And the idea that we could submit functionality requests for features we wanted and needed was very exciting.”

Currently 100 employees in the Content Operations department in Los Angeles and London are using the system, and Manke says there is interest in expanding to additional teams within the organization.

As a result of the implementation, Sony Network Entertainment has streamlined its processes within the Content Operations team. Managers have greater visibility into what the team is working on, and operators have a more consolidated resource for task assignments, according to Integrify.

“We’re continuing to move more and more processes over,” Manke says. “Most users find Integrify clean and easy to use. Many initial suggestions and ‘wish lists’ were able to be implemented with the new system. Features such as the discussion tab/comments are very popular.”

Also, Sony Network Entertainment’s integration specialists began exporting reports on open requests into Excel, and by using an algorithm, they’re able to prioritize requests based on related information within the ticket rather than using an arbitrary due date.

“This has been a colossal improvement for our team,” says Manke. “We’re a smarter operation--and this is an achievement we’ve been working toward for years.” (Image courtesy of ShutterStock.com)