After 20 years of production accounting experience on projects that have ranged from an Independent feature with a budget of 150K to Studio Blockbusters with budgets over 200 million one thing has been consistent. I kept asking myself a litany of questions about digital technology and the best solutions for capturing financial information on productions. With the help of many people along the way, Byagi, has released it’s flagship ALineProducer, a digital solution for the pains of doing production work in Hollywood. Hi my name is Aaron Walrod, and I am the founder and C.E.O. of Byagi.
GD started long before I had a name for it. First a definition of what GD means to me. It is the process of learning how to create, collect, store, share, and manage information in a digital environment. “We can think of a set of ordered tasks as a process: a series of steps involving activities, constraints, and resources that produce an intended output of some kind” (Pfleeger, Shari Lawrence, 2010, p. 45). It can be a smooth transition, but like anything it takes time, dedication, and determination in order to be successful. It also takes the right tools and a plan which is why Byagi has opened it doors for business offering, ALineProducer.
In 2012, approaching my mid-forties I went back to school while working full time because I needed more working knowledge of computer information systems. I then met Glen Berry and we started collaborating on a financial/managerial system that would automate the paper technology currently being used. My personal goal with this blog is to offer an authoritative, affiliative, coaching mentality to the business of helping our fellow brothers and sisters on their journey of “Going Digital” in Hollywood and sustain the new process with constant support and iterations of improvements to our web & mobile apps.
I was fortunate to have visionary bosses when I first broke into the industry. “Going Digital” for me started in 1997. I was on my third feature film when my boss told me he thought Microsoft Excel was going to replace Lotus 123 as the preferred spreadsheet. I was given the task of learning Excel and transferring his Lotus spreadsheets. At first it was a way to keep my job and then Excel became an obsession. I call this a Hollywood Love Story because it takes a commitment as strong as love to create a solution in a new frontier for an industry. It is an exciting time for Byagi to come forward and take a leadership role in setting the standard for how the industry processes its information.
When I decided to take the principals of GD and turn it into a business I had no idea where to start, but eventually the pieces came together. ALineProducer is a platform that brings together all the departments financial information in one place, it is intuitive, and sophisticated enough to provide real-time information to Producers and other stakeholders of a production, but easy for non-technology users to enter their data quickly and efficiently. “….true work of innovation is not coming up with something big and new, but instead recombining things that already exist….” (Brynjolfsson, E., McAfee, A. 2014, p. 76).
I have taken that quote to heart but added a twist. By combining things that already exist we have created something big and new. We combined a group of familiar tasks in a new environment that curve jumps (thanks Guy Kawasaki for helping me understand) the industry standards. Purchase orders, database management, budgeting, documentation storage/management, and reporting solution are not new yet we have combined all those tools into a powerful web application. We have created control and transparency. We have connected the stakeholders on a production to the accounts payable process in a way that uses current digital technology never before seen in the industry, but so simple it’s familiar. We provide the financial control and security from the start by going to the source. Our mission is to provide design friendly digital solutions for the arts and solve the pains of doing business on productions in Hollywood one at a time or five at a time.
I hope everyone who reads this will share this site with their friends and come back to read and learn more about Going Digital and start using ALineProducer making it an industry standard for all productions. There are some great subjects we will be covering with the goal to peak interest, educate, inform, and relay information that I find and have found to be helpful in my career. So if you want to take your production to the next level keep reading my blogs and contact us for a demo. The future of production finance is here and we have an offering that will meet and mostly likely exceed your expectations.
In closing the quotes I pulled for this blog do not have any affiliation with Byagi and are not an endorsement of our products. I have quoted people throughout the site and want to make it clear that these are for reference purposes only. I enjoy writing, but like a quality research paper I need the help of these educated people to give clarity, support, and meaning. I do recommend reading the books I have quoted. It will help to better understand the philosophy and values of what I write about.
REFERENCES
Brynjolfsson, E., & McAfee, A. (2014). The second machine age: Work, progress, and prosperity in a time of brilliant technologies.
Pfleeger, Shari Lawrence. (2010). Software engineering: Theory and practice. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.
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