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Relationals Gets the Charlotte ObserverRelationals, a vendor of hosted CRM, signs a North Carolina newspaper. By DAVID SIMS TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist Relationals, a vendor of hosted CRM focusing on the publishing and media industry, is announcing that Knight-Ridder's Charlotte Observer has selected the Relationals CRM suite to "accelerate the sales process, improve sales collaboration, and improve advertiser retention," according to Relationals officials. Susan Gagnon, Recruitment Advertising Sales Manager at the Observer said the newspaper will use Relationals to improve their "sales management capabilities, to improve our revenue forecasting and business planning… [and] have a central point for all customer information." Gagnon says with secure access to customer contacts, new opportunities, prior purchase, and campaign history, "sales reps can focus on a more consultative approach to selling our products and serving our advertisers." Last week Relationals announced that Lee Enterprise’s Columbus Telegram selected the Relationals CRM suite to “automate and simplify sales processes and improve advertiser relationship management.” “It’s been a phenomenal tool," says Shannon Brinker, Advertising Manager at the Columbus Telegram. "We can track every call, every mailing, every sales visit. A year from now we will be able to go back and look at that same activity to make sure we don’t miss out on any opportunities." Brinker said the software lets sales reps track their own revenue on a daily basis, and that "having a tool that helps track activity for multiple teams has been invaluable." The system can be customized to track flight revenue and individual project revenue to show on a daily basis exactly how many calls have been made for any project. Last November, the company released their Relationals CRM Suite version 2.0, which at the time they billed the "only product" that "integrates advertiser e-mail marketing campaigns seamlessly into sales representative daily workflow." In March the company released the 3.0 version, emphasizing customer loyalty and retention. “Newspapers need powerful automation solutions that provide all the integrated capabilities they need to streamline their workflow and effectively manage their advertiser relationships” said Pankaj Malviya, Chief Executive Officer, Relationals, Inc. upon the product release. “With Relationals CRM Suite, version 2.0 newspapers can completely manage advertiser campaigns as projects and track the end-to-end effectiveness of marketing customer acquisition marketing programs.” ----- David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/columnists/columnist.aspx?id=100005&nm=David%20 Sims |