ComputerWeekly Studies IT: Cirque

There’s a case study on Cirque du Soleil’s IT in a recently published article by Computer Weekly Magazine. You can read the full article here (which also contains other quick case studies) or view an excerpt relating just to Cirque du Soleil below:

Case study: Cirque du Soleil

Danielle Savoie has just outsourced her company’s IT in a £64m deal. A sizeable deal, that took Savoie a good deal of hard work to complete, for Savoie runs the systems for Montreal-based Cirque du Soleil, a business that has, as she points out, “complex needs”.

As a result, 84 IT staff have been transferred over to CGI, the outsourcer that has won the Cirque du Soleil contract.

Cirque du Soleil is a major global business. It has 3,000 employees, of whom 900 are artists, appearing in the spectacular shows that the company puts on around the world.

The company has three permanent offices in addition to its Montreal headquarters, but most staff are on tour for a lot of the time, usually staying for between four and six weeks in each city, before packing up and moving on.

“Our culture is very specific. It has been a very big challenge to go through its process of transformation to a new IT model. We have had to review all our processes and governance models and the business requirements for new information systems,” says Savoie.

The company’s main finance and administrative system is SAP, with separate applications for electronic document management and for maintaining theatrical equipment. “SAP was not a good fit for those areas, so we have implemented best-of-breed applications,” says Savoie.

The company also has a highly complex payroll system, which has to manage paying staff of many different nationalities, in different currencies, for different amounts of time.

“For the core business, we have had to develop a set of information systems specifically designed for what we do.” This includes a system to support the task of casting the artists who appear in the shows.

“We see a lot of talented people and a lot of demos. We need to keep track of that, and of everything related to each artist, which would include their address, any notes on immigration status, and so on. That is all dealt with by an in-house application running on a Microsoft platform,” says Savoie.

The unique nature of the Cirque du Soleil’s performances, with complex, gymnastic movements, requires support from a number of specific systems. One application is Kincirque, which is used in the company’s training centre to keep track of the movements carried out by artists and any injuries they may incur.

There is also a system to keep track of the make-up used by the artists. “This is very important, because each artist is responsible for their own make-up,” says Savoie.

“When I started, the information about the make-up, which is very specific, was all held by one person in a big binder. Now we have a centralised system, from which every artist can access their own performance technical specifications. They learn the details initially here in Montreal and it is all documented on a fact sheet, with images and a step-by-step guide. They take away the brushes and the colour and they are now self-sufficient.”

Another important system keeps track of the 15,000 separate costumes required for performances and the 3,300 sets of instructions relating to the costumes.

Stage management is another vital area that is now supported by IT. “We have a fully-integrated business solution that provides consistent and accurate data to help our stage technicians carry out their job,” says Savoie.

One important aspect of this, which will be very familiar to those in more corporate settings, is the ability to pull out management reports and ensure that the quality of the shows is consistent. “We have that information and are able to compare performances, to ensure we retain the very highest level of quality,” says Savoie.

Outsourcing this complex set of systems has been a major challenge, but Savoie believes it will provide the company with the best way forward as it looks to manage continuing growth.

Savoie consulted widely with peers in other businesses as part of the outsourcing process. “Although they were not in the same business, I was able to see what would be applicable to Cirque du Soleil and the pitfalls to avoid,” she says.

“The challenge now is to keep the agility I had before with my group. We are a very opportunistic business. We add new opportunities all the time and that means I have to be very agile. CGI is a huge business, but we have to keep CGI agile too.”