APRA AMCOS, innovators in music rights management, set a challenge to transform digitally, enhancing customer engagement and efficiency.
By implementing Dynamics 365, APRA AMCOS transformed its customer engagement, integrated ERP and CRM capabilities, and automated lead processing and sales operations.
The new system increased customer engagement, improved revenue, and provided real-time data and a unified view of customers, significantly enhancing customer service and sales.
Over 124,000 songwriters, composers, and music publishers across Australia and New Zealand turn to music rights management organizations APRA and AMCOS (APRA AMCOS) to represent their rights and collect royalties for performances and copies of their music. But the music industry has undergone huge change in recent years, continuing to evolve and transform from the way we listen to music to new developments in technology and Generative AI. APRA AMCOS acknowledges that the way forward is through innovation to benefit its members, partners and licensees, so it came as no surprise when the organization wanted to transform its licensee acquisition and engagement to ensure it maintains its position as a global leader.
APRA AMCOS embarked on a comprehensive digital transformation journey to meet the challenge it set for itself: becoming a digital-first business to enhance customer engagement and experience and increase the revenue it pays back to its members and partners with greater efficiency. With the help of implementation partner EY, not only is APRA AMCOS well on its way to meeting its goals, but with Dynamics 365, it’s the first music rights management organization in the world to have an end-to-end solution to seamlessly serve its customers.
“Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Insights is enabling more outreach to more prospects than ever before.”
Catherine Giuliano, Director, OneMusic Australia
When the organization started assessing how its existing technology supported its services and requirements, the team realized that while its on-premises legacy Dynamics AX 2012 system had served it well, it wasn’t scalable or compatible with a digital-first vision.
A simplified user experience giving customers a choice of payment methods was critical in making it easier to increase revenue to distribute to members and partners. Given its age, Dynamics AX 2012 lacked the functionality to automate subscription billing. “The native ability of Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations to manage subscription billing has redefined our strategy. Monthly billing has increased customer engagement and revenue,” explains Greer Davies, Director, OneMusic New Zealand. Since the introduction of subscription billing, nearly 90% of new customers have taken it up. As Jo Perjanik, Director of Business Transformation, explains, “We’ve evolved our ecommerce site and our marketing campaigns to take advantage of the subscription billing capability, and the customer uptake has surpassed our expectations. The results have been fantastic.”
Before Dynamics 365 integrated the organization’s enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management capabilities, it was challenging for APRA AMCOS to have clarity about the customer lifecycle, from pre-acquisition to billing. The organization couldn’t easily extract data to generate meaningful insights into things like churn, sales turnover, and query management.
By transforming how the organization interacts with customers and the underlying sales processes with out-of-the-box capabilities, teams now have end-to-end visibility and access to real-time data, along with a unified view of customers. “Introducing quotes into our sales process has increased visibility to support conversation and strengthened sales results,” explains Perjanik.
APRA AMCOS significantly improved its lead processing and sales operations by integrating Dynamics 365 with a custom-built lead screening tool. Previously, processing leads was a time-consuming, manual task. The new system allows users to leverage large volumes of leads, automatically compare them against their existing customer base, and instantly identify fresh prospects to nurture. These new leads are then funneled into an automated customer journey, streamlining the start of the acquisition process. The cloud-based solution also enables APRA AMCOS to scale lead ingestion quickly, based on specific segments or strategies.
“Our end-to-end sales process has been reinvented,” says Perjanik. “Dynamics 365 is supporting the ingestion of thousands of clean leads, and this will only continue to increase.”
When it comes to sales communication, the beat has sped up. Previously, sales representatives followed a rigid, correspondence chain on a sequential timeline, which required significant manual effort and lacked insight into open or click rates. With Dynamics 365, sales communication uses an automated lead pipeline based on a series of rules, enabling a filter to determine whether a lead needs full attention or can be handled through a digital process. Using automated communications has not only increased the volume of customers that self-convert, saving the sales representative time, but they are converting five times faster.
Catherine Giuliano, Director of OneMusic Australia notes that “Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, and Customer Insights is enabling more outreach to more prospects than ever before.”
With the new operating model in place supported by Dynamics 365, the organization has a single source of truth enabling business areas to follow the same processes, use the same records, and rely on the same pricing engine. For customers, the new system brings the ability to pay monthly online, access real-time information, and receive automated communications. The result is a better, timelier customer service experience for employees and customers alike.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service has been a turning point for customer service teams, who can now more efficiently support the sales teams. Instead of sifting through hundreds of emails in one inbox, customer service teams use queues and routing features to direct emails to the appropriate team based on predefined rules, eliminating the need to manually sort through email lists, accelerating resolution.
Dynamics 365 Customer Service has provided the customer service teams with the ability to track cases and queries and provides visibility and insights around volumes in order to implement effective case management strategies. The ability to track and apply SLAs enables management to monitor results and resources.
Ecommerce capabilities are game-changing too. The sleek design of the OneMusic AU and NZ ecommerce facilities powered by the product and pricing engine, and the real-time data from Dynamics 365 on uptake, means customers can view and buy their music cover quicker and more easily.
New Zealand reported its highest-performing sales month ever after implementation, as customers converted through ecommerce for the first time.
“The native ability of Dynamics 365 Finance to manage subscription billing has redefined our strategy. Monthly billing has increased customer engagement and revenue.”
Greer Davies, Director, OneMusic New Zealand
With Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, APRA AMCOS has upgraded its automated communications, focusing on building the foundation—having the right data to begin developing more advanced customer journeys. The organization is targeting a huge opportunity for growth in Australia and New Zealand which wouldn’t have been possible before Dynamics 365.
“What’s really game-changing is having a fully automated, end-to-end processes because it allows us to track and analyze customer behavior as they interact with the ecommerce platform, allowing us to adjust and refine customer journeys in real-time,” says Perjanik.
APRA AMCOS’s transformation has already earned rave reviews. In just the first three months since going live and with a huge uplift in marketing spend and lead volumes, the organization has seen an increase in self-directed and unguided sales compared to the same period the previous year. And on the very first day—in the very first hour, in fact—APRA AMCOS signed its first subscription billing client.
APRA AMCOS’s digital transformation is garnering recognition globally. But that’s only because of the strong support, dedication, and principled direction everyone from the CEO, Dean Ormston, and its Board to EY demonstrated throughout. The organization’s thoughtful change management plan heavily emphasized bringing end users onto steering committees and soliciting their contributions to the development of new business processes.
“The change is drastic; we chose Dynamics 365 because it was proven in the market. We were able to maximize the value by leveraging out-of-the-box capabilities, so we had to always drive back to our guiding principle: this is not a technology project. This is a growth project; technology is the enabler,” explains Perjanik.
APRA AMCOS’s technical teams are currently working with Microsoft to learn how to incorporate AI automation into business operations. Ever the innovator, the organization even has a Copilot Ambassador program, with some key stakeholders engaged in testing use cases. Its customers, members and partners can be assured that, as the industry keeps changing, APRA AMCOS will continue to lead and hit all the right notes.
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