At RightsZone, we have identified three key steps that we believe can grow a rights business: Workflow, Data and Strategy. The steps are based on the work we have done with many different rights departments and professionals, across an array of publishers and agencies.
We will take you through each of these steps in this series of blog posts, looking at common difficulties, approaches you can take to overcome them and how in doing so you can grow your rights business.
In our first blog post, we looked at the impact streamlining your workflow could have on your rights business, freeing up time that you could spend more productively.
In this step, we look at how creating smart data can enable you to use that time to drive understanding and growth of your rights business.
Making your data work harder
The time you have invested inputting data, throughout your workflow, is never time wasted. Data capture done properly can bring downstream advantages later in the workflow.
Getting your data in order
You can only realise the benefits of all the data you have, if it is captured smartly.
Whether you are currently using a spreadsheet or a database, you need to think about data management carefully, if you want your data to work harder for you. Consider how you will want to use your data later e.g. to create documents, to analyse trends, to report on, and therefore what data needs to be captured to enable you to do that effectively.
At RightsZone we’ve looked at a lot of rights data for our clients. These are the 5C’s that we recommend considering when it comes to data:
Carefully Structured
If you have ever been frustrated when you try to filter a spreadsheet column that contains a jumble of different data types, you will understand what we mean when we say that it is a good idea to apply some structure to your data. (We’ve seen columns or fields headed “language” that contain the names of countries, formats, rights, random text notes and actual languages, fine if you are looking at data row by row, but a nightmare if you are trying to filter or report on that data!).
Consistent
It is a good idea to ensure that all users input data in a consistent way, so that your analysis and reporting is reliable. One area where this can be a challenge is with data around advances or fees which may be recorded in different currencies. Consider whether you can record the value of your deals in a single, standard currency (using the conversion rates applicable when you finalise the deal) so that you have a consistent measure of value for your rights business.
Correct
Having accurate data is really critical, if you are going to be relying on it either to drive workflow processes or to be able to analyse data later on. Paying particular attention to dates and values is important for rights work, especially if these will be used to prompt actions such as invoicing or contract reversion. Inaccurate recording of dates and values may also result in under or over stating rights revenue in a period, which may have implications for budgets and investment decisions, so it really does pay to take particular care with these.
Complete
We’ve seen lots of examples of incomplete data sets and it is so frustrating when you want to answer an important question about your business (often a question asked by a senior colleague!), only to find that in order to do so you have got to waste time backfilling data that hadn’t previously been captured. Gaps in data could lead to you significantly under-reporting your hard-won deals, so it is worth reviewing your data regularly to make sure you have closed any gaps.
Compatible
Very often you will need to send data elsewhere, for example as a report to your finance team, so that they can invoice customers and apply the relevant author shares to any receipts. Capturing data that will flow easily into the receiving system is a really good idea. For example, using your organisation’s code for rights type will make it easier for the person processing royalties to ensure that the author gets paid the correct share for that type of right.
Using your data to grow your rights business
When these 5 Cs are in place, you can have confidence (an extra C!) in your data and rely on it to help you answer key questions to help you learn more about your rights business.
Here are some examples of questions that you could answer, once you have your data in order:
- How many rights deals are your agreeing each year?
- What is the value of your rights business?
- How does that breakdown between the different kinds of rights that you sell?
- Which markets are you doing deals in?
- Which markets do you do the most deals in?
- Which markets are the most lucrative?
- Do your strongest markets buy all of your list, or only parts of it?
- Do you have a good spread of customers in your strongest markets or are you reliant on just one or two?
The answers may surprise you, and if they do, your data can help you delve deeper in to the ‘why’…
- Why is it that you have a really strong customer base in one market but so few deals?
- Why is the market you do the most deals in delivering the least value?
- Why is your most lucrative market only buying 20% of your list?
You might see trends in content that you could capitalise on with some additional marketing of backlist titles in that genre. You might decide it’s worth investing time to identify more potential customers in a key market, or that you are spending too much time on markets or customers that are just not buying, that would be better spent elsewhere. When you really start delving into your data, there is so much you can learn about how your rights business is working and where the opportunities for further growth may lay.
When you have this knowledge in your hand, you can start to build a really cohesive strategy, check out the next blog post in our Grow your Rights Business series, to learn more:
Capturing and analysing rights data easily
The RightsZone system makes capturing and analysing rights data easy.
From data validation for key fields, list views that help you spot and correct gaps and anomalies quickly through to sophisticated reports and easy to read graphic dashboards to help you stay on top of the data that is most important to you, RightsZone makes your data work harder.
If you would like to see how RightsZone could reveal trends and opportunities to drive revenue growth for your rights business, please do get in touch.
“RightsZone has provided us with more insights and understanding of our Rights business, it is intuitive and easy to use.”
– Paul Owen, David C Cook
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