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Industry Insight
Operations

Beyond CRM or DRM: Rights Management Systems Explained

When some hear "rights management," they may think of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution like Salesforce or Zoho. Others may think of a Digital Rights Management (DRM) tool like Adobe Primetime or Google Widevine. In truth, rights management is a broad umbrella, encompassing many tools and functions that go beyond the capabilities of CRM and DRM systems alone. Rights Management Systems (RMS) provide a comprehensive solution that integrates and surpasses the functionalities of both CRM and DRM, offering a more holistic approach. In this article, we’ll explain the distinctions between these systems and why Molten Cloud stands out as a complete platform for the media and entertainment industry.

What is a CRM?

CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, a process that involves managing interactions with customers and potential customers throughout the sales process. CRM software is a tool that helps businesses organize, analyze, and aggregate customer data to better manage these relationships. Examples of popular CRMs include Salesforce and Zoho.

CRM Functions:

  • Pipeline Visibility and Forecasting: Provides insights into the sales pipeline, helping to forecast future sales.
  • Contact and Deal Management: Organizes and tracks information about contacts and deals.
  • Activity Tracking: Keeps a log of interactions and activities related to customers and prospects.
  • Lead Generation: Helps identify and manage potential leads.
  • Sales and Marketing Efforts: Assists in prioritizing sales and marketing efforts for different customer groups.
  • Customer Needs and Preferences: Provides insights into customer needs and preferences, helping you keep track of what kind of content they typically license.

Limitations of CRM:

While CRMs are powerful tools for managing customer relationships and are helpful for certain sales processes, they do not offer functionalities for managing digital rights, royalties, or content security. This is where the need for other tools become apparent.

What is a DRM?

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, a technology used to protect digital content from theft, illegal use, and unauthorized distribution. DRM systems employ various methods to secure digital content, ensuring that it is used in accordance with licensing agreements.

DRM Functions:

  • Access Authentication: Uses usernames, passwords, codes, and digital certification to prevent unauthorized access.
  • Usage Limitations: Restricts how users can share, print, forward, download, save copies, edit, or access content. This includes setting expiration dates and limiting the number of copies that can be made.
  • Watermarking: Watermarks content to verify ownership and authenticity, helping to deter and trace unauthorized distribution.

Limitations of DRM:

While DRM is essential for protecting digital content, it does not provide the comprehensive management of rights and royalties across various platforms and territories. It also lacks the integrated workflow capabilities needed for the full spectrum of media operations.

Molten Cloud: Beyond CRM and DRM

Molten Cloud is much more than a CRM or DRM. It is a holistic platform designed specifically for the media and entertainment industry, offering modern, streamlined infrastructure for managing rights, royalties, and content. While it integrates the functions of both CRM and DRM, it provides many additional tools and capabilities tailored to the needs of media operations.

Rights Management with Molten Cloud

Molten Cloud's rights module is all-encompassing, providing a robust set of tools designed to manage every aspect of rights management seamlessly.

Key Features:

  • Contracts Management: Comprehensive management of all contracts, including detailed tracking of terms, conditions, and obligations.
  • Deal Memos and Deal Tracking: Efficiently manage and track deal memos, ensuring all details are captured and easily accessible.
  • Contract Ingestion: Leverage AI to scan contracts, extract relevant data, and create rights records automatically, significantly reducing manual data entry and increasing accuracy.
  • Avails Search, Filter, and Export: Perform powerful avails searches with advanced filtering options. Export avails data with ease, including screeners and metadata, tailored to the specific needs of different platforms and partners.

Beyond Rights Management

Molten Cloud takes a holistic approach to operations, treating the acquisition and distribution of content as a seamless flow of data and actions, rather than a series of smaller, isolated tasks. By integrating rights, content, and royalties management into one powerful platform, Molten Cloud enhances efficiency, accuracy, and revenue potential across the organization. 

Conclusion

Rights management is a complex and multifaceted task that goes beyond the capabilities of CRM and DRM systems. At the core of content monetization is rights monetization. Therefore, rights data can be both incredibly complex and surprisingly vast. When done well, rights are something that should be all encompassing - intimately connected to your sales processes with CRM abilities like deal tracking, contact information, and contract management. It should also reach content - with DRM tools like piracy-protection as well as the ability to seamlessly create and export sales collateral like avails sheets which include screeners, art, and metadata. In an ideal world, your rights data will flow seamlessly into royalties too - streamlining the process of calculating royalties, based on the deal structures outlined in your contracts. If you’re interesting in learning how Molten Cloud accomplishes all of the above - and much more - book a demo and learn more.