The order comprises 500 user licences for 5fifteen’s ad DEPOT software, for use across four regional offices.
(Pictured from left: Mervyn Griffin, Sales and Marketing Director 5 fifteen and Frode Nordseth, COO/EVP at Media Norge ASA.)
The ad DEPOT system will handle display and classified advertising bookings for both print and online media. The software enables users to track and sell advertising as well as manage billing, contracts, layouts, marketing and salesforce automation; providing true end-to-end control of advertising sales, production and delivery processes.
“We went through an in-depth review of several systems and felt that 5 fifteen had developed an excellent understanding of our needs during the process,” comments Rune Nilsen, IT Manager advertising systems at Media Norge, “Another fundamental reason we opted for ad DEPOT is the remarkable flexibility of the system architecture – it allows us to integrate the best software for our business requirements into one cohesive solution, and the ‘plug and play’ type capability means we’re not tied into any other system architecture, software or specific functionality for life, so we can adapt as our business demands.”
The ad DEPOT system will integrate CRM, finance, production and sales systems, creating one cohesive advertising management solution for Media Norge.
Established in June 2009, Media Norge is a merger of leading Norwegian media houses Aftenposten, Bergens Tidende, Fædrelandsvennen, Stavanger Aftenblad and the online classifieds site Finn.no. According to Nilsen, since the company merged it has been working towards implementing several shared, consolidated systems across the regional offices: “We’ve already put an editorial system in place and the next natural step was to consolidate our advertising systems so that we can streamline our workflows and automate a lot of tasks that are currently performed manually. We needed something that could be deployed remotely to the geographically dispersed locations of our regional offices and we were also looking to improve on the existing functionality.”
An undoubtedly valuable improvement expected from the new ad DEPOT system is the leverage of an integrated advertising sales process across Media Norge’s portfolio of publications. “Of course we want to maximize our advertising revenue and we think the new system will help us do that by improving our ability to sell advertising packages and cross-sell across our newspaper titles,” says Nilsen. “The new system will make the process much more seamless as sales staff will have access to reliable, real-time inventory information, seeing exactly what spaces and positions are available within each publication at any given time.”
Aftenposten is a national newspaper based in Oslo and Norway’s largest by circulation, whilst Bergens Tidende, Fædrelandsvennen and Stavanger Aftenblad are all regional titles. With all the offices situated more than 200km apart, the browser-based system architecture of ad DEPOT makes it ideal for fast deployment at multiple locations.
“The philosophy behind our approach is ‘best of breed’,” comments Merv Griffin, Sales and Marketing Director 5 fifteen, “We integrate the best systems from the best suppliers to produce the optimal solution for our customers. For this particular order we performed a gap analysis at each of the locations and any required functionality that is not already delivered by the ad DEPOT software and the integrated systems will be developed as a part of the contract. It’s important to us that we not only fully accommodate our customers’ needs, but also deliver solutions that surpass previous experience and expectations.”
“The best thing is that no-one has to compromise with this solution. All of our internal stakeholders have bought into it and everyone gets something more than they had previously,” agrees Nilsen, concluding: “Of all the systems we reviewed, ad DEPOT most closely matched our ambition to create a single, seamless advertising management system.’
ad DEPOT will go live at Media Norge on 1st January 2013.
