Mail-order ads, printed newspapers, Atari 2600 games. Ancient history? Maybe, although some would say they’re not yet dead. Three media companies that began with these archaic offerings have remained viable and successful in an ever-evolving media market. How do they keep up? Since all three businesses have implemented Salesforce software, what used to be media mayhem in their business practices has spun into blockbuster bliss. The age-old challenges with complex pricing rules, siloed data, and customer service overload caused them to search for solutions. Salesforce delivers for media companies by offering integrated and automated tools to manage advertising and customer data in real time. Here are three leading examples of the transformation: 

 

Quotable quotes

EC (El Clasificado) Hispanic Media, a marketplace of buying and selling for Latinos, has expanded its business substantially since its direct mail order roots in 1988. Its pricing scenarios for advertisers are complex with varying discount offers. The company’s sales team needed a robust solution to its existing price quoting processes. The status quo included the manual entry of data, inefficient tracking, and a cumbersome system for approving special pricing. All of this led to inaccurate, delayed, or lost quotes, which in turn led to frustrated customers.

The company engaged Simplus to create a custom-designed solution, which included Salesforce CPQ. Salesforce CPQ (configure, price, quote) streamlines pricing, discounting, and approvals. With pricing rules integrated into the system, quotes are generated and forecasts are automatically updated. Once the software was in place, Simplus consultants trained company employees to use the new system.

“Working with the Simplus team has been a wonderful experience. I’ve worked with different organizations in the past and your processes are so much better, there’s a rhyme to the reason. Everyone I worked with was very knowledgeable with Salesforce CPQ,” says Martha de la Torre, CEO, El Clasificado.  “I foresee this tool being a high value game changer in the months to come. Highly recommend their services to anyone, especially those with Quote-to-Cash needs!” 

With a robust Salesforce CPQ solution integrated into your media business, your sales reps would have the tools they need to quote with confidence.

Related: How to know if you need a CPQ solution

 

Promising prospects

Financial Times, a leading global news organization and Salesforce customer, not only offers print-only subscriptions, but also digital-only, and a combination subscription as well. While that might not be breaking news, adapting to customer demands has kept the business newsworthy.

“We are genuinely thrilled by the disruption that technology brings because yes, on the one hand, it’s a threat and it destabilizes and disrupts the classic economics of how our business used to work, but our purpose hasn’t changed. All that’s changing is the way we fulfill that purpose,” says Caspar de Bono, Managing Director, B2B of Financial Times.

“It all comes back to putting the customer at the heart of what we do,” says Christina Scott, CIO.

With that customer-centered focus in mind, the company opted to integrate Salesforce solutions into its practices, including Sales Cloud for advertiser and customer data, Service Cloud for customer service, and Marketing Cloud for social media engagement.

“Before we moved to the Salesforce platform, we used to have siloed relationships with the customer, so we had lots of different systems whether it was from the newspaper or whether it was from digital,” Scott says.

Inefficient data research results in lost profits.

“The ability to consolidate onto one platform has had a big impact for us. It’s more cost-effective to maintain and support, and users only have to log into one place,” says Scott.

“We don’t have to predict the future. We don’t have to say, ‘mobile is going to be bigger than desktop,’ or ‘desktop is going to be bigger than newsprint,’ and ‘there will (or won’t) be newspaper’ or ‘there will (or won’t) be desktop.’ It doesn’t matter. Because we now have that fundamental relationship with the customer and we have a business model that is adaptive. Salesforce will continue to be a catalyst in the system, but now, instead of treating our audience as passive recipients of what we do, we can include them,” Bono says.

Related: 3 big reasons you need to amp up your Sales Cloud game

 

Custom contacts

ActiVision has been a player in the gaming industry for decades. Knowing that engaging with customers is key to its business, the company implemented Salesforce Social Studio.

“It’s all about being personal and interacting with people the way they want to be interacted with,” says Robert Schmid, CIO of ActiVision. “I personally don’t like calling somewhere. I just hate hanging on the phone.”

With Social Studio, the company can interact with customers on social media and discover their gaming questions, problems, and preferences. From this interaction, employees can help solve problems and use data to build a robust self-help knowledge base.

Before integrating Salesforce, 50% of customer service was self-serve. After Salesforce implementation, self-service climbed to 85%. In customer service alone, Salesforce has helped the business achieve an $800,000 average annual benefit.

Related: Digital strategy for the contact center: be where your customers are

If you’re entertaining ideas of real-time data solutions for your media business, now is the time to up your game. Simplus will help your media business achieve big-time results with Salesforce, so contact Simplus today.