ABS
PCS’s Advertising Business System (ABS) manages all the commercial advertising needs of any multimedia publishing business, 24 X 7. The PCS ethos of ‘end-to-end publishing’ is fully realised in ABS, with substantial investment in developing innovative technologies and web based ‘Self Service’ solutions allowing customers and clients to do business ‘any time any place’ via the Internet. In an age when audience retention, revenue and costs are being scrutinised, PCS have evolved a suite of proven products enabling publishers to reach out to new audiences. ABS helps arrest falling income by opening and managing new revenue opportunities, as well as offering the levels of flexibility and service that customers have come to expect in today's business environment. Previously unimaginable, customer communication is open for business 24 X 7. Sales, accounting and administration functions can now be securely accessed by customers and client’s alike, generating additional revenue via subtle up-sells, reducing operational costs and improving valuable business relationships. In a world where advertising revenues are being challenged by non-traditional sources, understanding the customer is crucial. ABS’s CRM and Prospect Canvassing functions are critical for sales teams, allowing them to manage customers more professionally and efficiently maximise time during sales calls. Canvassing known customers, whether by expired adverts, previous campaign or business type has never been so easy. The ability to capture canvassing data on the fly during sales calls is also invaluable for use in future campaigns. Specialist feature and supplement promotions can be created and targeted in minutes ensuring the sales team will never be without a sales lead again. A detailed management overview of each team’s performance is available via a web browser and includes such items as number of calls made (whether effective or not), success rates, revenue and yield totals, all reported in real time. Throughout the sales process, regional, cross media/publication, multi style, and up-sell opportunities are introduced. All advertisement data is accessible at insert level, allowing for the immediate ‘lifting’ of previously booked adverts, enabling the rapid creation of future inserts or simple booking amendments. Creating and amending each insert is supported by dynamic PDF proofing. Internet publishing of both classified and display/ROP advertisements could not be simpler, thanks to the ability to capture and structure content during the booking process. Exporting this advertising content to the web is a simple single key process. ABS’s integral advertising sales ledger is a powerful, real time, pro-active, sales account management system that informs when an account’s conditions falls outside of the norm, ensuring instant and accurate actioning of credit control procedures, on a maintainable event basis, seeking out accounts that have failed to meet pre-defined conditions. Most sales ledgers are just a database of sales invoices with an indication as to whether an invoice is outstanding, reconciled or un-reconciled. Ad-Ledger is seamlessly integrated with the advertising system sharing a common database. This ensures instant and accurate actioning of credit control procedures. Ad-Ledger has been designed with clear screens and user friendly tools to minimise keyboard activity and reflect publishing accounting practice. Query management is another high profile area. Transactions in query have an adverse affect on cash flow and so often, apart from the loss of good will, cause days outstanding to increase. Ad-Ledger not only provides facilities to create and inform on the level of queries but also the ability to target the person responsible with monitoring and turnaround conditions which are difficult to ignore. Ad-Ledger has the facility to view credit notes and free advert appearances which have been created in ABS’s Ad-Booking. Following the concept of true integration, Ad- Ledger will allow, given that security rights have been granted, access to all areas of the database. Facilities to view customer orders at all stages such as waiting to appear; appeared but not invoiced; invoiced but not paid; in query; settled; archived; are all available. Drilling down through a customer invoice will detail what action has been taken, who has been involved with the transaction from the day it was booked, and text of an advert and, if necessary, an indication of the paper and position in which the advert appeared. Ad-Ledger has been designed to provide options for sending and receiving data to and from other third party systems and devices – for example, facilities for obtaining authorisation on debit/credit cards and the electronic registration of charges. The Customer Credit Management functions in ABS automatically identify and then closely monitor accounts that match pre-defined exception criteria. This enables selective active management of customer account credit, where deemed necessary. From here credit control teams have all the necessary information and tools available to professionally follow up customers who’s credit behaviour falls outside of their agreed terms. PCS continue to push the boundaries with ABS, providing publishers with great performance, high levels of flexibility and self service that both the industry and our customer’s clients have come to expect in today’s multimedia publishing business environment.