Tuning in to business needs
Tuning in to business needs
Though it may not like to shout about it, a better example of how to go about acquiring a new business application than the methodology used by radio broadcasting company Austereo would be hard to come by, such is its thoroughness. Organisations looking to avoid implementing costly white elephants should take note. By Stuart Finlayson
Radio broadcasting company Austereo has enjoyed steady growth since its inception in Adelaide back in 1980 with the launch of SAFM. As it grew by acquisition, so too did the number of disparate CRM systems it had to accommodate. Something had to be done to reduce the complexity, but what?
Austereo is now one of Australia's largest radio broadcasters, operating 14 radio stations around the country, including the national Today and Triple M networks, targeting listeners under 45. The company broadcasts to the country's major population centres, including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Newcastle and Canberra.
The group has grown by acquisition and this time last year we were literally running 12 separate databases of customer information, which Austereo's group IT manager, Peter Bourke admits was a nightmare for consolidated reporting. "We needed a single solution to underpin our advertising and promotions operation and support our employees in achieving their revenue budgets."
Austereo started the process of looking for a CRM solution in detailed fashion in late 2002. The new system had to be able to fulfil the customer service activities, so important to commercial broadcasters. Advertising dollars are the lifeblood of any radio station and high ratings are critical for attracting advertisers. With the introduction of new radio licences intensifying competition, Austereo needed to introduce a system to manage internal processes relating to advertising and promotions, improving staff productivity and increasing the group's ability to respond quickly to changing market conditions.
"We wanted a system that was modelled to handle the relationships in our industry," reveals Bourke. "Some of the key players in our industry are the advertising agencies, the agency customers, and our direct customers who don't go through an agency, so we really needed a system that had the flexibility to be able to map the whole industry and the whole way it works into the system very accurately."
Singing for their supper
Austereo set about the task in hand, liasing with a number of consultants to map out its needs. It then developed a shortlist of prospects before putting out a request for proposal to the shortlist.
"We then went through the normal proposal evaluation processes, including quite detailed scripted demonstrations of their systems. So we wrote the scripts, then they had to show how their systems would handle our workflows," explains Bourke.
Acutely aware of the need to get such a large scale, mission critical implementation absolutely right, Bourke stipulated that each of the competing vendors had to agree to a demo of their system under Austereo's terms, rather than merely being treated to the vendor's own slick standard demo, if they were to have any hope of being awarded the business, a move which Bourke reveals did not go down particularly well.
"When we did the demonstrations with the end users it annoyed the vendors, as we got them to implement a reasonable amount of their systems so that we could truly test some of our workflows. This enabled us to see the system doing what we want it to do rather than what the vendor wants us to see, and that annoyed them a bit, as they normally have their own scripted demos that are designed to work well, as they know the strengths of their own system. Doing it our way was quite valuable because it helped us really understand whether the systems would work for us or not."
But Austereo was not finished there. "Further into the process we had a prototype as well before we implemented it-then we had a pilot site operating before the full rollout," says Bourke.
StayinFront out in front
After the thorough examination of the contenders, one system stood head and shoulders above the rest-StayinFront's Visual Elk.
"It was a pretty clear winner, especially with the users," says Bourke. "The end users were very hands-on involved in the demonstration and evaluation phases, and it was a unanimous decision to choose StayinFront.
"StayinFront Visual Elk is very much in a league of its own. It comes with a development framework that allowed us to configure the system to exactly fit our processes and needs, which has been critical to its success with our users.
"We provide great customer service and have excellent processes which the staff know and like, but it was costing us way too much internally because we didn't have the right technology in place. The fact that StayinFront could emulate and streamline these processes made an enormous difference."
Austereo worked closely with StayinFront to design and implement the system, conducting acceptance testing and a pilot in January 2004, before rolling it out nationwide between February and May. Known internally as 'The Link', the system now provides a single platform for around 300 staff working in sales, promotions, client marketing and traffic, which handles advertising schedules and bookings.
The Link handles thousands of electronic documents every month, with its workflow engine automatically routing files to the right people across the organisation to manage work requests, approvals and so on.
"With The Link delivering time savings on each process, we're now saving hundreds of hours a month through productivity gains, and errors have been all but eliminated," beams Bourke. "We have a more holistic view of all our customers and can respond more quickly to their needs. The system also gives us the benefit of an agile platform that supports rapid business change."
Crucially, the scalable nature of the system allows the group to view approach the addition of further radio stations to the group with confidence, rather than the daunting prospect it was previously.
"It was indeed, as prior to its implementation, if we doubled in size, we had to double the number of systems and double the effort in looking after it-there was no scaling at all. We now have one database instead of twelve. This is critical as new players enter the market and competition becomes more intense. We've already established interests in radio stations in the UK, Malaysia and Greece, and are exploring other opportunities as they arise. The fact that this system can be easily reconfigured to accommodate changes in our business structure gives us enormous flexibility in our future planning."
Austereo invested in its CRM project with new hardware, software and consulting skills, choosing a browser-based front end to reduce the rollout effort and simplify life for users. Bourke says the company has been delighted with the outcome.
"There's absolutely no doubt at any level of the organisation that it's been an excellent investment. We now have a single database of customer information, eliminating all the errors and inconsistencies associated with duplicated information and processes. This has been the best system rollout we've ever undertaken and was completed on time and within budget, a rare thing for CRM projects.
"StayinFront had a very solid project methodology with good systems and tools to support it. We were able to achieve a high degree of knowledge transfer and are now largely self-sufficient, which was a critical success factor from an IT point of view."Austereo's decision to involve users throughout the project and to use its top sales performers to train their colleagues within each region also contributed to very high user acceptance.
"The Link is critical to helping us maintain and increase our revenues. We're already 75 percent paper-free in our sales operation and are undertaking additional work to improve management of pipeline activities for our sales executives.
"Our new undertakings will provide easy access to detailed reports about our sales activities and performance to inform the decision-making process and improve the way we manage our business."
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