Information technology is extremely important to the entertainment sector.

Numerous special
effects, graphical additions and innovative multimedia applications are being used these days
in movies. All this has been made possible because of information technology.
As with most industries, information technologies are pervading the entertainment industry at
an ever increasing rate. People look forward to the entertainment for recreation, so that they
can reduce their stress and strains of their complex machine like schedules. All our traditional
entertainment utilities like music, movies, sports, games, etc. are now affected by IT, one can
have all these services, sitting at home and enjoying themselves. People regardless of stature
or geographic location are now able to experience advancements in the entertainment and
digital world through not just television, radio and printed media but also through the
internet.
Lack of understanding the use and the requirement of IT in entertainment industry constituted
the issue of resistance to IT-related change at Cirque. It was characterized by opposition by
some members of the staff and notwithstanding managers which were wondering about the
role that information technology (IT) could play in an organization where creativity,
imagination and inspiration were paramount.
The issue of data integration and preservation span the entire design and creative activities at
cirque, especially costume-making process; make-up process and making of plaster heads.
The costume-making process information was stored separately in different Excel files,
making it difficult to manage all input and output patterns easily. Similarly, making of plaster
heads at Cirque was also affected by this issue due to poor storage of information on the
location of the heads. All these poor processes of handling information and knowledge from
these various activities led to documents being lost as well as diverse inefficiencies.
Another issue that faced was how to manage various equipment and activities that are
required to set up the touring show site within 30 hours. This involves about 55 trailer-loads
of equipment of over 20,000 categories as part of show infrastructure. Transporting this alone
is a difficult task.
A good IT solution can positively support the strategic direction of the company, bring
about profitability, act as a source of competitive advantage, raise the morale of the
company's employees, increase collaboration among different units and even enhance
customer satisfaction at Cirque.
Savoies group standardized all servers and workstations on Windows 2000 with Active
Directory and redesigned the IT road cases, switching to compact rack-mounted servers with
standardized cable connections.
As part of her efforts to streamline tour IT, Savoie decided to make the leap to voice-over-IP
(VoIP) technology and replace cumbersome copper cable with fiber-optic cable. The fibercan handle both voice and data communications, eliminating the need for separate lines.
Switching to VoIP and a single cable for voice and data also reduces by 25 percent (eight
hours) the time required to install the IT infrastructure on tour.

Over the past five years, the number of software applications used by Cirque du Soleil
employees has increased from roughly 40 to more than 200. Although these tools run a wide
range of operations from handling human resources and finance to making costumes and
scheduling performing artists these applications could not share data. This shortcoming
threatened productivity or even the prospects for a show to go on without major headaches.
The company implemented SAP software for human resources, logistics and finance in 2000
and, later, installed a full-blown version of SAP's enterprise resource planning software for
procurement, costume manufacturing, and event and artist scheduling.
Most of these applications, however, couldn't communicate with each other. Moreover, the
individual troupes traveling through North America were running their applications on
different operating systems, and as a result, these troupes acted more like independent
businesses instead of parts of a larger organization.
To give employees access to data and tools from more than 200 applications running on
multiple operating systems, Savoie embarked on a year-long project to install IBM's
WebSphere Business Integration Server Express Plus software to connect her disparate
systems. The goal of this project was to organize all the application environments onto a
single, standardized platform for access and development. Savoie and her team, along with
IBM consultants, broke up the project into four separate pieces.
The first phase took place during 18 weeks in which Cirque du Soleil's informationtechnology staff and IBM consultants deployed the methodology of the project. They
essentially determined what functions and applications they wanted to integrate into the SAP
planning system as well as how they wanted to collect, disseminate and access information
from the various applications.
Next, Cirque du Soleil spent four months building the Web interface to the planning system
so that information could be accessed, edited and analysed from the corporate intranet.
Under the five-month-long third phase, financial information was consolidated. Data on
ticket sales, procurement, merchandising and other financial matters that had been stored
separately on either the Windows operating system or the SAP system was now connected so
that executives could get a snapshot view of the entire company.
Finally, the developers spent the last 2 1/2 months integrating the Cirque du Soleil intranet
with its online help-desk system so performers, managers and other staff could resolve
problems quicker instead of exchanging phone calls about scheduling deliveries or other
issues.
Now that everyone had access to the same information regardless of the application or
operating system from which it had originated, Cirque du Soleil began to make strategic
business decisions with a global vision.