First, let me say ZAIKS’s users have enthusiastically adopted ‘CIS-Net powered by Fast-Track’. CIS-Net is used in our Documentation & Distribution department and some other cooperating departments that have access to CIS-Net information. Nowadays, the Musical Works (MWI) and Audio-Visual (AVI) tools are our top applications. We currently have 48 users and two administrators. Among these users, 12 employees use MWI on a daily basis in order to identify foreign musical works and to register them in our own database, while two other employees constantly work with the AVI tool to identify foreign audio-visual works and to send their requests for cue sheets to sister societies.
The use of CIS-Net has definitely had a positive impact on ZAIKS workflow. Above all, the access to the registration of such a large number of musical and audio-visual works has allowed us to increase our efficiency in the identification process and in the quality of our documentation through access to additional information such as ISWCs or information on performers. Moreover, positive psychological changes have occurred: Thanks to the elimination of manually handled paper work such as hard copies of ‘Fiches Internationales’, the identification of works has become more dynamic and is perceived by our employees as more varied and interesting.
One of the main benefits of ‘CIS-Net powered by FastTrack’ for our composers and authors is that it makes ZAIKS domestic repertoire available in CIS-Net through the WID database.
Similarly to other societies, the main challenge for us was to improve our internal workflow in order to be able to download the data from CIS-Net MWI to our local database. We were finally successful in doing so, as we recently implemented an automatic downloading process for CWR format works from CIS-Net directly to our proprietary database (the information was previously registered manually in our internal system). The most important advantages of the new process is the ability to obtain reports of updates from nodes from which we downloaded works. In our rapidly changing environment, with publishers entitled to obtain royalties, a local database containing up-to-date information is essential. Therefore, it is important that societies regularly update registrations of works within their own nodes. In order to fully benefit from technological innovations, societies should put emphasis on the quality of the documentation and pay more attention to having the correct numbers (ISWC, IPI) to enable automatic matching of the works.
Moreover, we use CIS-Net MWI “international works” for the purpose of checking royalties received from abroad while implementing the CRD project.
The AVI application has also significantly influenced and increased our workflow process. This tool allowed us to create a virtually automatic process to obtain cue sheets for foreign audio-visual works and to register them in our local database. The data received in AVR format (only a few societies still send their cue sheets in PDF format) are automatically uploaded into our database. The works are then checked and matched against our registration in our local sub-publishers database and linked to our local sub-publishing agreements. This process allows us to increase the efficiency, although a small problem still remains: Each society has some specific rules and some exceptions in registering its own data.
In conclusion, we are aware that CIS-Net is constantly evolving, depending on business needs, and I believe that each new solution or new functionality will make our work easier, more efficient and more satisfying. We are open to all future enhancements. Today, ‘CIS-Net powered by FastTrack’ is an authoritative source of data for us for ‘work-by-work’ identification of musical and audio-visual works. When we think about the future, we wonder how CIS-Net will evolve in order to face the digital challenge related to multi-territorial licensing and accounting of royalties depending on the Internet territory.
Anna Bacińska
ZAIKS Documentation & Distribution Specialist
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