Sage CRM for Media solution by Providian

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1 Sage CRM for Media solution by Providian

2 Sage CRM for Media solution by Providian The media and entertainment (M&E) industry is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. The various segments i.e. television, advertising, print media and radio among others, have witnessed tremendous growth in the last few years. South Africa s entertainment and media market is expected to expand at a compound annual rate of 10.9 percent over the next five years, which is one of the highest growth rates worldwide, according to the PWC South African Entertainment and Media Outlook The market is expected to generate total revenue of R175 billion in Viewership across the various segments is increasing and marketers are launching new channels to meet this growing demand. The plethora of options available to the corporate advertisers has resulted in increasing competition amongst media vehicles for the lion s share of the region s media and advertising industry. It has therefore become imperative for media companies to adopt new technologies and proven best practices in CRM to ensure maximum sales and productivity.

3 Challenges Most media companies have a distributed sales force in the field across many countries, all trying to get advertising spends from prospective customers. The customers or accounts are either allocated to sales staff on the basis of territory or industry vertical or are picked up from the Missed Client Analysis which is generated on a weekly or monthly basis. This report contains data regarding quantum, frequency and time bands around advertising by major accounts during the previous week. Leading market research companies provide this information via reports this provides valuable information to sales people around budget, advertising requirements and possible strategy of major advertisers. There is however no system to ensure that the missed client analysis has been viewed by the sales team and no automated method to analyze the data to make informed sales and marketing decisions, resulting in poor utilization of an otherwise important marketing tool. Management therefore needs an automated method to ensure that they are aware of industry happenings and have the benefit of the missed client report. The sales executive makes contact with the identified prospect with a view to introducing the company and its offerings. Media sales business is characterized by two-way selling as it involves two parties, namely the account or the company and the agency. Three scenarios are possible; one where the client independently takes all decisions with regard to advertisement spends and buys, the second where the client makes the buying decision but fulfills it via the agency and the third, where the agency is fully responsible for ad buying. It is essential for the sales executive to identify the exact dynamics involved in the deal in order to ensure that he is spending his time and effort on the right person. Therefore his accounts need to be configured to enable bi-directional sales to clients and agencies with specifics on which brands fall under the agency s purview and which party is responsible for generating the particular Release Order. This is not possible through MS Excel worksheets and results in a lot of duplication and wasted time and effort. With weekly changes in TRPs, the media business is extremely dynamic with annual and midyear rate changes that are manually relayed to the sales force. Since there is no centralized system for updating rate changes it is quite possible for proposals to be sent with the old rates. In the case of General Entertainment channels and News Channels, the ad sales are extremely commoditized with a large number of proposals being generated on a daily basis by the numerous sales executives in each location. The proposals are primarily related to the relevant time band, rate and total amount and require minimum customisation. However, having to manually create the proposals is both time consuming and error prone this can be solved by automating the proposal generation process. There is also no automated method of tracking the status of these proposals, generating reminders for approvals and authorizations and moving the proposal on to logical conclusion. Each salesperson is authorized to allow only a certain percentage of discount, anything higher requires further approval. Automated work flow would ensure that when the proposal is in the negotiation stage, a mail is automatically sent to the manager for his authorization of required discount. This would ensure that all proposals are being worked upon in tandem to ensure that no opportunity slips through the fingers. Once the proposal is accepted and the advertisement is aired, the bill is generated and then needs to go to the correct person within the account and followed up for payment. In the manual method payment follow-up is not done efficiently and there is also no system for monitoring the client s credit status.

4 There is normally an excessive demand for primetime slots and a corresponding trough in demand for non-prime time slots. As a result it is common for prime time slots to be oversold while non-prime time slots go without ads. Having an updated view of inventory helps the sales strategy person to react in real time to such situations. The business of ad sales is extremely personalised and depends on carefully cultivated relationships. Small gestures like remembering important days can go a long way in cementing relationships. However it is near impossible to manually remember the dates of all prospects in a sales executive s list or to keep track of their hobbies and other interests. Hence there is a need for an automated reminder of birthdays, anniversaries as well as an updated record of likes and dislikes of senior account representatives to ensure that gestures made are relevant. Offline integration with leading market reports ensures that media and advertisement expenditure of current and prospective clients is automatically posted against respective accounts. This data is further analysed by the system to automatically generate the Missed Client Analysis which gives a ready reckoner of missed opportunities, providing essential information on client budgets and spends so that he can make more accurate pitches. This report is distributed from the server to all sales staff across locations, which gives the management control over whether the sales staff have effectively utilised the information. Sage CRM also enables effective inventory management as it empowers the sales strategy team to take real time rate decisions to generate maximum returns from air time demand and prevent over sell or under sell of time slots. Once the bill is generated, it travels from accounts to the CRM electronic system from where reminders are sent to the sales person to follow up with the client for payment and take the follow up to conclusion. In the event of a credit hold, the system blocks proposal generation for the client unless the dues are settled. Once payment is made the system is automatically updated and the sales person is informed. Sage CRM helps create static sales forecast and sales reports as well as dynamic MIS and Business intelligence reports using visual analyzer, an add-on feature that provides top management with real time views of market trends, ad spends, top deals. The system also maintains detailed information about the client such as hobbies, important dates and interests, enabling the company and its management to connect personally with the client. The communication can even be automated by using Sage CRM s Workflow engine to send personalised automatic communications to the relevant client contact from any designated person in the company.

5 Solution Sage CRM for Media is the industry specific Customer Relationship Management Suite from Sage which has been developed on the award winning Sage CRM platform and customized to address the specific requirements of the media industry. The solution has been developed by UAE based Sage business partner Providian Global FZE. The solution comes with default features for automated proposal generation, central rate card management, account management, offline integration with market reports and deal and opportunity management. Sage CRM integrates to Sage ERP X3, Sage s world class ERP, and can also be integrated to other leading ERP suites like SAP and Oracle as well as the leading broadcasting systems in the world such as Wide Orbit, RCS. Sage CRM scales with a business as required, the implementation will expand in line with growth requirements of the media company. Sage CRM allows users to create detailed fields to maintain data regarding type of account client or agency, the relevant contact at the client or agency, client brands and media managers involved, ensuring that the sales person uses his time and efforts around the Release order effectively and profitably. Meetings and interactions history are held in a central repository, increasing productivity by providing top level managers with a complete view of the amount of time that has been devoted by the sales executive to an account. They are also empowered to assign realistic monthly, quarterly and annual targets for their team members and monitor the same on a region, division and team basis. The powerful activity and calendar management tool within Sage CRM helps optimize sales time by enabling sales personnel to manage their daily sales activities and ensure that they stay ahead. Sage CRM also enables the creation of a central rate card called the rate master that is updated either annually or half-yearly by the administrator. The flexibility of the proposal module allows for easy creation and maintenance of proposal templates. While generating proposals, the relevant rate, appropriate discount from the discount master as well as terms and conditions are pulled into the pre-existing templates so that proposals are created at the touch of a button, thereby eliminating errors at the user level. Once the proposal has been sent to the client, there is a tracking system whereby the status of the proposal is monitored and an inbuilt approval mechanism sends out mails for rate related authorization to the senior managers. Furthermore as each opportunity progresses, the user can track details such as products involved, duration of the campaign, other media and agency information, ensuring that he stays abreast of all current campaigns. Sage CRM helps create static sales forecast and sales reports as well as dynamic MIS and Business intelligence reports using visual analyzer, an add-on feature, which offers top management real time view of market trends, ad spends, top deals.

6 Benefits Sage CRM offers the following key business benefits to media & broadcasting companies: Sage CRM offers senior management within the media company with accurate visibility into Sales Pipeline. It enables sales personnel to better manage the complex 2 way selling to customers and their agencies and facilitates brand based selling. The proposal module enables automatic generation of personalized proposals from a central rate card to eliminate errors and discrepancies. It helps in easy creation of proposal templates, discount masters and terms and conditions masters so that proposals can be generated at the touch of a button. Sage CRM facilitates effective media agency management. It enables central management of complex rate cards with various options such as time bands, prime time. Sage CRM helps sales people to track and manage opportunities from start to final closure. It enables effective sales activity management through a powerful calendar and activity management tool. It helps the management to monitor performance and productivity of the sales team and set realistic sales targets. Due to integration with programming and broadcast system, it offers management an integrated view of operations. Sage CRM provides a centralized and complete view of the sales inventory which enables effective inventory management and helps sales teams to achieve targets. Sage CRM brings market and competitor information from TAM, RAM, Aircheck, Adex and other rating services, into the system in a comprehensive manner and analyzes it automatically to create the Missed Client Report. By maintaining client and agency personal information it helps the media house provide personalized service for increased customer satisfaction and loyalty. About Sage CRM Sage CRM is used by over 12,000 organisations in 70 countries worldwide to manage their critical sales, marketing and customer service activities every day. Award-winning Sage CRM equips businesses with the tools they need to find new customers, close sales faster and build lasting, more profitable relationships across all channels. Regardless of how, when or where customers, partners and prospects choose to interact with your business, Sage CRM provides a decisive advantage by delivering a comprehensive, easy-to-use system to successfully manage these relationships.

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