Case Study - Sumners Edit Suite Schedule
Who are Sumners?
Sumners are the largest post production editing facility for broadcast media in the North West and are one of the top ten in the country. They have over 25 offline edit suites, 5 online edit suites, 2 dubbing suites, 5.1 mixing suite, voice over suite, grading suite plus a graphics department. Their clients hire the edit suites and engineers for their productions, often in weekly / monthly blocks.What they wanted
When Sumners began over 18 years ago, they only had a few edit suites and they managed their bookings on a spreadsheet. As they grew more and more columns were added to the spreadsheet and the cells and columns got smaller and smaller! Even when the spreadsheet bookings for a month were printed on an A3 sheet, they still needed a magnifying glass to read the text! Also, the spreadsheet didn't always capture all the data that was required, such as billing details for a client or who the production manager is for a drama. Sumners also had several manual tasks to perform each day, such as copying the information from the Spreadsheet onto worksheets for each of the editors so they'd know what they're working on.
What we did
We developed an Intranet-based resource management and booking application. Sumners access the application via a web browser to make bookings for edit suites, dubbing facilities, editors and equipment. Reports can be printed for staff on a daily, weekly or monthly basis and all the information that's captured is fed through to accounts so that invoices are generated promptly.
Benefits to the client
• No more looking at a printout with a magnifying glass!
• Client contact and billing information must be entered so that accounts department always know who to invoice.
• Web based application means that anyone can use the system in the building without having to install any software.
• Much faster booking process, especially for repeat bookings over several weeks.
• Editor and other human resources are easily managed and assigned to projects based on known availability.
• Easy to use drag 'n drop user interface.
• Integrates with existing Timesheet recording system.
• Huge efficiency savings in man power allowing front of house staff to be freed up from administrative tasks to look after the customers in the facility.
• Option to export to Excel spreadsheet for legacy support.
