Sabam

About the Customer

SABAM is the Belgian Federation of Authors, Composers and Publishers. This privately-owned company collects and grants copyrights on an international level. It does not only represent musicians, but also writers, photographers, playwrights, painters, etc.  SABAM collects and grants huge amounts of royalty fees.

The Customer’s Needs

Over the last few years, the intellectual copyright business has been subject to some drastic changes, with the growth of new media such as online distribution of copyright material, digital broadcasting technologies, etc.  For this reason, SABAM does not only need cutting-edge ICT but also an updated application to manage its data and financial transactions.

Most of the current applications are still managed in a Siemens BS2000 Mainframe environment. It is SABAM’s intention to switch from this environment over to an Oracle application with higher performance, based on a distributed Unix platform. This new solution should enable SABAM’s users to manage their financial traffic in a web-based manner. This is a strategic initiative for which terms of reference and an initial analysis have already been conducted and work has been performed by SABAM. However, because SABAM does not have enough skilled staff, is struggling with a complex code system and has basically no documentation, the company has decided to select a service provider to assist them in this project. 

The Solution

• Belgian and global resources to manage and develop the migration.
• Project governance and management from onshore as well as offshore locations – with appropriate emphasis on the tasks to be performed at each location, compliant with the SkillTeam Project Management Methodology, based on Prince2. Strong focus on business analysis to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
• An ongoing project in ‘Time & Material’ mode, making key resources available throughout the whole project duration, without any major investment to be made by SABAM in ICT infrastructure, licenses, etc.
• Use the existing structure to continue process improvement.
• Local delivery is provided by SkillTeam (Project Manager, Business Analysts), assisted by one Landed GDC Engagement Manager. IBM’s Global Delivery Center will take care of design, application development, testing, etc. 

What made us special?

Several elements contributed to the combined success of IBM and SkillTeam:

• The solution approach was a joint effort by IBM & SkillTeam: pragmatic, flexible, creative
• IBM commitment demonstrated in our presentation, meetings and contract negotiation
• IBM Global Delivery experiences, incl. reference visit at Johnson & Johnson’s
• Several months of commitment from IBM and SkillTeam before being short-listed.
• Strong personal contact between IBM/SkillTeam and the decision makers.

SABAM has committed itself for the entire project, but for the time being it only wants to focus on Module 1 (out of 4), which comprises about 45% of the scope. A frame agreement has been drafted, with descriptions and estimations for all 4 Modules, with the intention to shift smoothly from one Module to the next, allowing for change requests and redefinition of the scope. 

Competition was: Logica CMG, Atos Origin and Oracle