For SABAM, ‘CIS-Net powered by FastTrack’ Is an Indispensable Tool
Thanks to its multidisciplinary approach, SABAM is Belgium’s leading authors’ rights society, representing more than 36,000 members. With over 10 million works in our proprietary database, SABAM’s Documentation department plays a key role in the collection and distribution of authors’ royalties.
The Early Years
From the very beginning SABAM took a strong interest in the development of FastTrack, which lead us to join the technical alliance in 2001. With the birth of ‘CIS-Net powered by FastTrack,’ we immediately understood the advantages this could represent for our society. There was no doubt we would take part in the implementation of such a crucial tool.
Why We Use CIS-Net
One of the main benefits of CIS-Net is to make our own repertoire accessible to sister societies. More than 650,000 domestic works with a SABAM interest and 1.2 million international works found their way to CIS-Net’s MWI. On the top of that, there were
11,000 domestic productions uploaded to CIS-Net AVI.
The advantage of retrieving accurate data within a few mouse clicks is an important key for us, speeding up our workflows and keeping our database as accurate as possible. No less than 20 employees, representing 60% of our Documentation department, use CIS-Net on a daily basis. As other departments also make use of CIS-Net tools, we have a total of 40 CIS-Net users.
One of the features our department relies on is MWI-RTF. This tool enables us to upload musical works directly into our database without the waste of time involved in printing the former “Fiches Internationales” or checking specific distribution keys.
Moreover, the AV Index has enabled us to create an almost automatic process for retrieving and documenting cue sheets. The cue sheets are requested via CIS-Net AVI and those received are directly implemented in our proprietary database via AVR format, increasing the efficiency of our workflow by 40%.
There is, of course, still some room for improvement, as most of the societies are not yet able to upload their publisher agreements into AGM (agreements application), and we feel AGM has not yet reached its full potential.
Another improvement would be the implementation of an automatic matching facility for audio-visual works, as we spend a great deal of time in manual searches through CIS-Net AVI.
Gearing Up for the Future
Despite these minor flaws, CIS-Net has drastically changed the way we deal with our core business and has pulled us into the heart of the 21st century. Providing us with the necessary tools to establish a more accurate and faster documentation, it helped us modernize our work processes. Last but not least, our members and sister societies have reaped the rewards of what has been sowed in current and future distributions.
Sofie Vlaeminck
Head of SABAM Documentation Department
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