Making sure that musicians get paid for their work is a complex business that involves licensing the public performance of music to business entities - from major movie productions down to local country bars. That means the business process requires hyper-connectivity and flexibility. This is the perfect case for leveraging cloud technology like Salesforce and document automation from Drawloop.

Mary Katherine Simmons, Director of Licensing Business Systems and lead Salesforce administrator at ASCAP, joined us on App Talks to share how Salesforce and Drawloop allow her small team to distribute 7,500+ customer communications and licensing agreements per week in a simple, point-and-click environment.

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) is a 100-year-old member-run organization tasked with protecting the livelihood of over 500,000 US composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers with a library of over nine million songs.

Drawloop’s LOOP Document Services application has been on the AppExchange since 2007 and more than 150 other customers have shared their feedback. Take a look at Drawloop’s AppExchange listing for details. 

Check out Mary Katherine’s story for a true glimpse into the massive productivity potential associated with moving business to the cloud.

Thousands of artists count on ASCAP to protect their livelihood.

With so many members and songs -- and establishments looking to legally use those songs -- constantly evolving, streamlining and accelerating the pace of communications at ASCAP is mission critical. “One of the main roles of my position is systems stability, and Drawloop and Salesforce make that so very easy for me." 

Find out more about how ASCAP serves its members – including the current ASCAP President, Paul Williams, who wrote all-time greats like The Love Boat theme song and The Rainbow Connection for The Muppet Movie. 

Learn more about how ASCAP serves 500,000 artists:

Oldies are great songs that warm the heart. Old technology and systems? Not so much.

“Our licensing managers work remotely in field, interacting daily with customers.  Before Salesforce and Drawloop, they were using company-issued computers with VPN and Lotus Notes, replicating data every night.  In order to fulfill the license package requests from our license managers, we had a staff of 5 people in Nashville that were literally pulling paper and putting packages together. The only way we could distribute the license packages was through the mail.  Drawloop gave our licensing managers the ability to immediately create and distribute a single package of documents including a license agreement and rate schedule, as well as populate an invoice with a simple point-and-click inside of Salesforce.” 

Find out more about how ASCAP’s document distribution went from a waltz to speed metal:

It doesn’t get much easier than Drawloop integrated with Salesforce.

"We went from sending out 300 to over 7,500 license packages per week and at the same time, reduced our printing staff to 2 employees. The other beauty is that our document packages can be emailed to our customers. It's point and click with Drawloop, which we all in Salesforce love…even on the admin side."

See the short and sweet demo of ASCAP’s easy-to-use interface:

Peer advice every Salesforce Admin should take to heart.

Mary Katherine advises others looking to solve their documentation creation and distribution issues.

1. Don’t wait. We’ve already seen such a mass increase in the number of licenses we’re able to send our customers, which translates into reaching more customers and educating them on usage.
2. Look for a company that’s willing to work with you and help guide you. Drawloop has always gone above and beyond for what we need in terms of developing new business processes.
3. Listen to your users. Listen to the people who are out there using Salesforce and looking for ways to improve their job function.

Check out Mary Katherine’s advice for admins:

Learn more about the Salesforce1 AppExchange by clicking here.