Executive Summary

In the high-stakes entertainment and sports sector, delays in product approvals can directly affect launch timelines and retail performance. WME Group(through its licensing arm, IMG) manages complex approval workflows for global brands whose licensed products generate more than $17 billion in annual retail sales.

As the business grew, its legacy approval platform became increasingly difficult to maintain and extend due to an aging tech stack and rigid interface constraints. WME Group needed a modern, scalable system that could streamline product approvals, support dynamic brand-specific workflows, and enable teams to bring licensed products to retail markets faster.

To maintain its market dominance, WME Group required an overhaul of its outdated approval workflow platform constrained by limited capabilities. Legacy brand approval systems were slow and made it difficult to support new feature requests, and the implementation of crucial features like customized workflows for specific brands. We reimagined and re-engineered the platform from the ground up, with a unified workflow engine, dynamic forms, system-wide reporting, and a companion mobile app (eApprovals). This digital transformation cut approval processing times by 40% and provided the technical resilience required to manage high-volume global brand assets.

Client Snapshot

  • Company Name: WME Group (formerly IMG Licensing)
  • Industry: Brand Licensing, Sports and Entertainment
  • Scale: Drives over $17 billion in annual retail sales; manages major global IPs (UFC, WWE, MLB, Volkswagen, ESPN)
  • Geography: Global Operations

Outcomes

The Challenge

IMG Licensing, the brand licensing subsidiary of WME Group, operates as the world’s leading brand licensing agency. However, its License Product Management department struggled to provide a streamlined service due to an outdated approval workflow management platform:

  • Rigid Product Licensing Workflows: The existing platform was built on an outdated tech stack with low usability, making it impossible to handle custom brand compliance forms or execute dynamic, multi-tier approval routing.
  • Lack of Customization: Brand management teams could not configure tailored workflows or bespoke submission forms for specific brands, forcing diverse corporate partners into a rigid, one-size-fits-all platform that was nearly impossible to upgrade.
  • Operational Bottlenecks: Without dynamic routing, automated user synchronization, or flexible administrative controls, licensees experienced significant friction during product sign-offs, threatening critical retail launch windows across fast-moving consumer goods.

Our Approach

We re-architected legacy licensing systems from the ground up. Taking a holistic, multi-platform approach, the team developed a repeatable workflow engine to streamline global brand licensing, built a dedicated enterprise mobile app for on-the-go product approvals, and synchronized the platform directly with central licensing databases. By modernizing core architectures across web and mobile channels, Net Solutions delivered a scalable, resilient digital platform that eliminated approval bottlenecks and supported high-volume global licensing operations.

The Solution

Global Licensing Core

We built an enterprise workflow platform that synchronizes brand and licensee profiles directly from the central licensing core platform:

  • Dynamic Form Creation: Product management teams can design custom approval request forms tailored to specific project criteria and licensing agreements.
  • Configurable Workflows: Brand managers can configure multi-tier authorization steps to mirror unique internal corporate hierarchies and automatically update key stakeholders as submissions progress.
  • Historical Archiving: Upon approval, complete product details, media assets, and historical communications are archived into a searchable gallery for licensors and licensees.
  • Advanced Reporting Engine: System-level reporting equipped with extensive filters allows super administrators to track aggregate requests by licensee, product class, or specific brand.
eApprovals Enterprise Mobile Suite

To transition critical approval dependencies into live field environments, Net Solutions extended the web platform into native iOS and Android apps:

  • eApprovals App: Delivers full feature parity with the web dashboard, allowing traveling executives and brand stewards to audit asset pipelines, evaluate product designs, and execute legally binding sign-offs directly from mobile screens.
Global Expansion

Net Solutions engineered the core approval logic into a repeatable framework that was successfully expanded to run standalone tracking environments for major global sports properties and corporate clients:

  • Rugby World Cup (2015, 2019, 2023): Centralized and tracked consecutive merchandise, co-branding, and compliance approvals across three global multi-week campaigns.
  • CONMEBOL: Unified multi-lingual partner licensing streams for South American football club championships.
  • Major League Baseball (MLB): Deployed rapid-response approval templates to adapt instantly to shifting retail calendars.
  • Volkswagen: Delivered a secure, auditable hub for lifestyle brand alignment and corporate asset clearings.

The Impact

The operational and architectural overhaul delivered measurable efficiency gains and long-term commercial value across the global enterprise:

  • 40% Reduction in Approval Processing Time: Automated routing and mobile sign-offs allowed licensees to clear products for retail markets weeks ahead of historical cycle, accelerating time-to-market.
  • 70% Internal Adoption Within Six Months: Clean, frictionless UI design secured rapid software buy-in from internal brand stewards and global external licensees.
  • 25% Faster Report Generation: Enhanced system-level database filtering tools cut historical reporting lag for operational audits.
  • Enterprise Mobile Scale: The proprietary EApprovals mobile app remains live and actively managed by WME Group as a protected B2B hub, tracking over 100 organization-level direct deployments.
  • Strategic Growth Foundation: The multi-tournament licensing models built for the Rugby World Cup established the operational trust required for World Rugby and WME Group to formally expand their 30-year relationship into a major multi-year digital distribution partnership.

Net Solutions provided excellent support in the areas of website engineering and site optimization. I can confidently recommend Net Solutions as a dedicated and reliable supplier, and as experts in their field.

Jaspinder Singh

Jaspinder Singh

SVP, Global Applications & Financial Systems, WME Group

Why Us / Key Differentiators

We align complex technology implementation with precise enterprise branding guidelines. Our team combines deep database integration expertise with disciplined product design to turn high-risk workflows into predictable, high-performance digital ecosystems. We know that a modern mobile application is only as good as the database syncing logic underneath it. By bridging the gap between legacy corporate mainframes, enterprise CRMs, and responsive front-end interfaces, we build infrastructure designed to protect and scale multi-billion-dollar global portfolios. If you need an engineering partner who understands the operational realities of global media distribution, let’s connect.

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