Sharp Ad Reporting
This is a quiz. Sharpen your pencil and put on your thinking cap. Now choose between the following:
100 sheets of paper containing all the information you need, but not in the order you need it, or
20 sheets of paper providing all the information you need, in the order you need it.
Bill Donley, commercial-print and advertising manager at Knight Ridder's Centre Daily Times in State College, Pa., thought that Option A—a 100-page report produced by the paper's prolific AIM advertising-management system—could stand some improvement.
After about two years of pondering how that would happen, system technician Charles "Chaz" Clowes joined the paper, bringing with him a background in Microsoft's Access database-reporting application. With Clowes on the Access side of things, and Systems Administrator Harvey Wall on the Collier-Jackson (now Geac) mainframe pitching data, Donley's idea became reality. The result, which took about 160 hours spread over a half-year to develop, was the Ad Rep Dossier Project.
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| Microsoft Access taps into a mainframe ad system. |
The project gives the advertising department the flexibility and control over sales reports that newsrooms hoped to gain over the production process with pagination. Ad reps can use dossiers to check on expiring contracts and find outstanding balances, while ad managers have a new tool to track reps' progress, and the promotions department can develop prospect lists for special sections. And the data everyone is using are more accurate, because the more usable format makes it easier to check for missing data or errors along the way.
Jobs continue running in the AIM system as usual, except information normally printed as voluminous reports is now saved to three different flat files, which then are transferred to a Windows NT server and updated daily. A series of macros, triggered by one mouse click, exports those files to an Access97 database.
The biggest problem was figuring out how to convert AIM data to generic ASCII text. Having a source-code license from C-J/Geac helped, but the team says it could also have used Hewlett-Packard's Query to extract data.
Once in Access, a user screen offers a choice of query data sheets that can be selected to produce the desired dossier by power users and novices alike, says Karen Betts, the paper's technology director. Data then can be manipulated further by cutting and pasting to a spreadsheet or word processor, exporting to another application, or printing labels and form letters. Needless to say, the entire project is Y2K compliant.
Access to reporting functions generally is limited to ad managers and assistants, some of whom have become power users in their departments—even taking extracurricular courses in Access and extending the system's functionality. Ad reps can request information for the next day or the next week, and then go out and sell without being tied to a computer in the office.
And it doesn't take a pop quiz to realize that's the end goal of virtually every advertising-system improvement.
L. Carol Christopher is president of Christopher Communications in Berkeley, Calif. E-mail, cchristo@weber.ucsd.edu; phone, (510) 444-7841.
NAA Partners 2000: 25 on Board
Seeking to revamp outdated procedures, some 25 newspapers are now using the NAA Partners 2000 turnkey program, released in April.
NAA has also launched a password-protected World Wide Web site (www.naapartners2000.org) for program participants. The site includes event calendars, team directories, meeting reports, a project database and NAA P2000 University, a clearinghouse for training manuals and materials, as well as certified facilitators and other communications tools.
A change program, NAA P2000 helps focus operations on customer satisfaction and streamline processes. Through process analysis and continuous-improvement techniques, the program helps newspapers increase revenue, cut costs, improve operations and exceed customer expectations.
The nine pilot NAA P2000 newspapers, three of which began testing the process in 1997, have reported dramatic cost and time savings. Among the many improvements: reducing late pages, ad errors and circulation redeliveries while at the same time removing a number of steps needed to get an ad into the newspaper and improving work flow (TechNews, May/June 1999, p. 25).
"Our employees say they never want to go back," says Jim Bridges, publisher of The Bismarck (N.D.) Tribune, who was general manager of the Billings (Mont.) Gazette when it became one of the first NAA P2000 pilot sites. "Each of our processes has room for improvement. The problem is, most newspapers don't have the foundation [for process change]. NAA Partners 2000 brings the tools to analyze that. Sometimes, it hits you in the face and you say, 'Why in the world are we doing this?'
"We can't raise our prices much more," Bridges continues. "These are your options: more revenue streams and growing market share [or]...take control of costs. Unfortunately, too many newspapers change their structure first, and they're left with not enough people, or the wrong people, doing the same lousy processes."
Among new NAA P2000 users are three Freedom Communications Inc. dailies, five Lee Enterprises Inc. dailies, two New York Times Regional Newspaper Group dailies, and five Scripps dailies.
Help Wanted, With Video
If a picture is worth a thousand words, The New York Times has several million new ways to attract premium help-wanted classifieds.
In other words, moving pictures.
By partnering with SearchLinc.com Inc., the Times can now offer recruitment advertisers the ability to view video clips of prospective job candidates and conduct real-time interviews over the Texas company's video-conferencing network.
"This substantially speeds the hiring cycle, cuts recruiting costs and makes [advertisers] more competitive in the job marketplace," says Paul Lien, SearchLinc founder and executive vice president.
Candidates can record a 30-second video introduction and be interviewed at New York Times job fairs or SearchLinc's global network of recording facilities, which will soon include private rooms in scores of Radisson hotels within an hour's drive of 90 percent of the U.S. population.
Advertisers pay to promote job openings or their companies with 30-second clips or 3-to-5 minute videos, as well as for videoconferencing time and the use of video booths for interviews at Times job fairs or SearchLinc's hotel-room network. Times print advertisers receive substantial discounts, as well as the needed video equipment for their corporate offices for free.
"The alliance with SearchLinc.com will provide a value-added benefit to our corporate advertisers and advertising agencies, as well as to job seekers across the country," says Marion O'Grady, the Times' group director of classified advertising.
One-fifth of all Fortune 500 companies already use videoconferencing in the recruiting process, though lack of facilities and poor quality have limited the tool's use. SearchLinc uses a proprietary high-speed data network to ensure video quality, officials say.