IFRA

Responding for Atex is Lars Jiborn, Advertising Global Product Manager.

WAN-IFRA: Why is CRM important for news publishers?

Lars Jiborn: In the advertising department, a need for CRM solutions has long been a requirement for an efficient sales organisation.

During the past two decades, the competition for advertising spending has increased with the proliferation of direct mail, billboards, events, and of course, the Internet.

For this reason, newspapers have been motivated to invest in CRM solutions that help them generate leads, properly monitor sales process, create clear pipelines and an accurate picture of potential opportunities.

At Atex, we believe that CRM is also an integral part of the whole order process, with information and sales triggers coming from the advertising system such as when payments are late, when ads expire, or when ads are cancelled due to poor performance.

These indicators are important for the sales staff in understanding the full process of advertising sales.

WAN-IFRA: What are the main questions that publishers have when they come to you for a CRM solution?

Jiborn: Mostly, the questions we get are around ease of use, and how well our CRM product integrates with other desktop tools like Outlook. Atex has, in fact, developed open interfaces and web services to enable our customers to achieve such integrations.

WAN-IFRA: How does the process typically develop from the time a news publishing customer comes to you for a CRM solution until they implement the solution - what are the steps involved here?

Jiborn: For us, the CRM is either part of the installation of our advertising system, or we implement an integration point to another CRM solution such as Salesforce.com. For Atex, we do not sell our CRM solution stand-alone, only together with our advertising platform.

WAN-IFRA: How much training is involved for users to use your CRM features?

Jiborn: For using the CRM, the training is less than half a day. For reports and statistics, training takes another half day. To administrate the CRM components, one to two days of training is typically required.

Interviewed conducted by Brian Veseling, senior editor, Publishing, Editorial and General Management and WAN-IFRA Magazine.