Digital Publishing
3 mins read

Increasing advertising sales in difficult times

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According to PCS, its industry knowledge and broad customer base have told them that publishers need a new approach to advertising sales and CRM in the 21st century.  It has therefore developed a ground-up platform for the modern publishing workflow now and in the future.  Simon Weare, Sales Knowledge Project Manager talks to WNIP about what Sales Knowledge is and what it means for your business.

So what exactly is Sales Knowledge?

Sales Knowledge is an end-to-end advertising, sales and finance platform designed to meet the needs of the modern publishing workflow in the 21st century.  Fully browser based, it is intuitive and flexible in delivering a seamless approach to increase sales of digital or print advertising, whilst putting the user at the heart of the process.

Why did you decide to develop Sales Knowledge? 

We were looking to develop our existing advertising solution, ABS, further to fulfill industry needs of having a digital, browser based solution offering real time reporting and more opportunity for sales.  However in order to fully realise our ambitions, it became apparent that a new ground up solution was required; hence the birth of Sales Knowledge.

What has been the key focus during development?

The User.  Sales Knowledge has been built based on how the user needs to interact with it – easily, intuitively and flexibly regardless of location.  We put together a dedicated team of developers, including a graphic designer with games design experience, so that Sales Knowledge would have an intuitive user interface that would be easy to navigate, familiar and require little training.

The system is implemented as a suite of individual tools that dynamically interact with each other.  The user can configure the arrangement of tools across multiple dashboards to meet their individual requirements.

What does Sales Knowledge do?

Sales Knowledge facilitates total control of the advertising sales process, removing the layers of administration that use up valuable sales and management time.

Sales teams can spend longer in the field forging stronger customer relationships, with the right tools at hand to be fully informed about products on offer and each client’s unique profile.  This gives them the ideal opportunity to upsell and introduce more products from their portfolio, resulting in increased sales.

Managers can set sales revenue targets and other key performance indicators required to drive the business on a day to day basis, whilst always having a high level overview of that business at any one point.

What benefits does Sales Knowledge offer the user?

Browser based – work anywhere, anytime on desktops, laptops and tablet devices.

User interface – highly customisable for individual business needs and fully adaptive based on job function.

Reduce administration – remove processes and manual tasks that take up valuable time for both sales staff and administration teams.

Shopping basket – whether setting up an order for digital, print, individual classified line items or complex campaigns, this can all be handled through one simple basket style process.

Improved customer relationships – forge deeper stronger relationships with your clients as sales staff can spend more time with them, with all the necessary information at their fingertips to increase sales.

Customer card – all activity, history and functions surrounding a customer are accessible in one place.

Self-service for users – A fully integrated, consumer focused portal to allow customers to manage all aspects of their advertising sales with the publisher on-line.

Built for the future – Sales Knowledge is built to be adaptable to industry needs now and in the future.  It is developed by an established industry organisation that will continue to work on enhancing the platform and isn’t going anywhere.

Business analysis – set and monitor key performance indicators, produce management reports and get a real time picture of the business right now, as well as year on year.

Search – Flexible free-form search facilities to quickly identify and filter customers, accounts, contacts, orders and more.

Why should a publisher invest in Sales Knowledge?

At PCS we believe that our software is better when developed in partnership with end users.  We have over 40 years of experience in the publishing industry, delivering high-end solutions to groups and individual publishers around the world.  A dedicated in-house development team was put in place for Sales Knowledge and there are exciting plans for the future enhancements over the coming years.

At PCS we are aware that each publisher is different and a one size fits all approach will not work.  Therefore we have deliberately built Sales Knowledge to make it flexible to the needs of our clients now, whilst being adaptable to what comes around the corner in the next say 1, 5 or even 10 years.

Thanks Simon. How do publishers get in touch with you?

Easily. Just visit www.pcs-publishing.com or by calling 01902 374757.