Sony Motion Pictures Entertainment
How Sony Motion Pictures Entertainment eliminated 60 hours per month of manual document generation by building a custom Airtable-to-Formstack automation for their accounting and finance teams.
Industry: Media & Entertainment
Client Profile: $85B total annual revenue, 9,800+ employees, major film and television studio based in Culver City, CA
Project & Partners: Formstack Documents (Intellistack) & Airtable custom integration
Key Results
- 60 hours/month of manual document work eliminated
- $36,000/year in productivity recovery
- Future-proofed automation framework for evolving workflows
About the Client
Sony Motion Pictures Entertainment (Sony MPE) is a major film and television studio based in Culver City, CA, and part of Sony Group's $85 billion global enterprise. With iconic franchises and a vast production slate, Sony MPE's back-office operations are as complex as their creative output. Their accounting and finance teams manage hundreds of contracts, vendor agreements, and financial reports each month — processes that depend on accurate, timely document generation at scale.
Client Voice
Sony MPE's finance team recovered 720 hours per year by automating conditional document generation. If your team is stuck in repetitive workflows, there's a better way.
Ready to eliminate workflow bottlenecks that cost your team dozens of hours each month?
The Challenge
Sony MPE's accounting and finance teams relied on Formstack Documents and Airtable to automate critical workflows. The native integration between these platforms lacked a key capability: the ability to trigger document generation based on specific record conditions within Airtable.
The Manual Bottleneck
Without conditional logic, finance staff had to manually review records, determine which documents were needed, and generate them one by one. For a studio managing hundreds of contracts, vendor agreements, and financial reports each month, this created a significant operational bottleneck.
The Solution
The engagement centered on building a custom Airtable Script that worked in tandem with Airtable's Automation features. The script evaluated record-level conditions in real time and triggered Formstack Documents to generate the correct documents automatically.
Flexible Architecture
The solution was designed with flexibility in mind. As Sony MPE's workflows evolved, the script could accommodate new document types, additional conditional triggers, and variations in the finance team's processes without requiring a rebuild.
Key Components
- Custom Airtable Script for conditional document triggering
- Integration layer connecting Airtable Automations to Formstack Documents API
- Record-level logic to route different document types based on contract status, vendor category, and approval stage
- Error handling and logging for finance team visibility
The Results
By the Numbers
- 60 hours/month of manual document work eliminated
- $36,000/year in productivity recovery (at ~$50/hour for accounting staff)
- 720 hours/year redirected from manual processes to higher-value work
Operational Impact
Beyond time savings, the solution reduced errors in document generation. Manual processes often led to incorrect document versions being sent to vendors or internal stakeholders. The automated system ensured consistency across all generated documents.
The forward-looking design also gave Sony MPE the flexibility to adapt the system as their finance processes changed, protecting the investment from becoming obsolete.
Sony MPE's finance team recovered 720 hours per year by automating conditional document generation. If your team is stuck in repetitive workflows, there's a better way.
Ready to eliminate workflow bottlenecks that cost your team dozens of hours each month?