Bill Farley, national account manager for Mass -- the Mobile Advertising Sales System, made by Gannett Media Technology International Inc. of Cincinnati -- advised that most of his sales are justified by the anticipated return on investment. (Per-seat cost can be as high as $15,000 when the purchase cost of a laptop is included.)

This comes about from the reduced level of ad makegoods because of calculation errors made in the field, he said. Selling Mass and products like it relies on this point since it's hard to prove, up front, that the technology will absolutely result in more calls and more contracts.

Farley observed that client-server architecture has opened a wide range of possibilities for sales force automation, but that everyone has a slightly different view of what it should do.

"Sales force automation is an ongoing process," he said. "It's not an event and it's not shrink-wrapped."

"Laptops with adequate processing power and storage have made all sorts of new things practical," said Farley. "The problems arise in selecting the most important parts of the application to put on the laptop, and discerning what your business needs are."

In actuality, he said, what a newspaper chooses usually is based on both the prejudices of the paper's sales manager and the experience of the sales force which, he said, "runs the gamut from scared to sophisticated."

So, who's playing in the field of sales force automation?

Electronic Data Systems
EDS of New York City (http://www.eds.com/) has a hat to toss into the virtual sales ring: Asis, the Advertising Sales Information System.

Asis was developed in conjunction with the New York Times, where it is fully operational, to offer automated presentation, proposal, pricing and production spec functionality. The system has been running for three years, reported the Times' Meihwa Lin, director of sales systems in the advertising department.

The idea for the system arose, said Lin, because "we felt the newspaper business is extremely competitive. Senior management figured that if we didn't get in shape, we wouldn't be able to stay alive."

The Times looked at lots of shrink-wrapped products, but wanted a way to manage the three-way relationship between the paper, advertisers and ad agencies. "There was nothing out there," said Lin, "so we decided to write the specs. We chose EDS because it has a reputation for quick development."

She suggested that before any newspaper buys a sales force automation system, it should focus on what it wants to get out of the technology: "If you don't focus, you'll never get the system up because there are just too many things it can do. Find out what objectives management has in mind.

"For us, it was customer service and productivity."

EDS worked with the Times to define the particular set of problems facing newspaper sales reps: too much time spent chasing information and doing administrative work; information that is scattered, outdated and difficult to share; poor market analysis tools, and a sales cycle too slow to keep newspaper sales reps as competitive as a fast-paced market demands.

The Times implemented training team by team, since it believed that it was important for each group to be able to communicate internally about how it was using the new tool. So the department store team was trained together, as was the financial team, and so on.

The system has worked well, according to Lin: "Now we're more focused, more intelligent about our customers and more proactive."

Lin said the real surprise of the system has been reps' use of Microsoft PowerPoint's presentation capabilities.

"We didn't think it would catch on," she said, "but it turned out to be one very popular feature. People love to go in and do it -- it's really effective and fun. They can develop proposals using really slick art work.

"It used to take anywhere from two or three weeks to two months to get a proposal back. Now they can do it in two hours," she said. "Once they discovered how much control they gained over the schedule, they really dove in."

EDS' Virtual Sales Office (VSO) extends Asis functionality to the laptop: Sales reps can get needed information whether they're sitting at their desks or at a customer's site, via either the 'Net or intranet.

VSO allows for what EDS calls a "heterogeneous desktop" environment for information sharing and gathering, so you're not locked into one platform or another. The server software runs off either an SGI or NT platform; EDS will help with another on request.

GMTI & Multi-Ad
Gannett Media Technologies International's (http://www.gmti.com/) entry in the sales automation field is Mass -- Mobile Advertising Sales System.

Introduced as a pilot program at Gannett's Rochester papers, more than 40 Gannett sites are now on Mass. While Gannett corporate provides training, support and installation for its smaller properties, Gmti supports the five largest papers and is co-marketing the product, along with Multi-Ad Services Inc. of Peoria, Ill., to papers outside the Gannett family circle.

Reps can create sales proposals and presentations, track sales and accounts, and enter orders, as well as display spec ads and download advertising updates daily to be assured of up-to-date advertiser information.

Mass operates from a Macintosh PowerBook platform, in part because Gannett papers already had plenty of PowerBooks in place, along with the people to support them. But Mac users also have access to plenty of already-developed, off-the-shelf software, such as the Microsoft Office suite, and calendar and contact management software from Now Software Inc.

Mass is compatible with specialized advertising-sales applications such as Media Marketing's Ad Director.

Multi-Ad offers Sales Edition (Mase), another Mac PowerBook sales tool for to help with investigating co-op funds (via Multi-Ad's ReCAS co-op advertising funds database), presenting spec ads and placing brand-name product illustrations in front of customers.

Creating spec ads in front of the customer gets easier as clients can provide input as the ads are created. Sales reps can draw from Multi-Ad's Ad Builder and Scan artwork libraries.

Media Data Technology Inc. (MDTI)
Mdti has but one foot in the sales automation niche, said president and owner John Peters, but the company is leaving a big footprint.

Mdti developed its Sales Management Support System to allow sales people at the Chicago Tribune to generate sales reports from their PC laptops using any SQL query application.

John Mika, Tribune systems manager, said sales managers and reps who use the system like it a lot, although he maintained that the system is still underutilized: "In the future, we'll add order entry possibilities ... but that's not as important as we thought it would be two years ago."

The Tribune started out using CS Query and Windows 3.1 on its laptops and is in the process of working with Mdti, of Spokane, Wash., and South Hadley, Mass., to upgrade to Windows 95. Sales reps can dial in to the paper's Management Support System Sybase relational database, which provides a record of transactions -- updated daily -- from the Neasi-Weber ADMARC ad-order management system.

(Mdti set out to support Northridge, Calif.'s Neasi-Weber systems because of ADMARC's penetration among larger newspapers, which have bigger problems in the sales arena. Besides, Peters argued, "there's really no competition" to his system, which supports System Integrators Inc. systems and is designed to be compatible with other front-ends.)

At the Tribune, "we're using it for planning and performance data," Mika said. "We have the flexibility to generate reports without going through the ADMARC report experts. With CS Query running on the client side of the application, we can take core reports and vary them by dates, parameters, linage and ad count."

Those reports can assist reps in sales presentations.

Other help comes through queries to show trending and performance information. Sales reps can be more effective in customer contacts by choosing what data they want to see.

For example, they can request a view of the history of a particular territory -- up to three years -- or the broader picture, such as a view of a month's worth of a customer's advertising activity in either calendar or graph format.

The Tribune has implemented the system in two phases, with phase two running through the first of next year. Reps and managers are getting training not only in Sales Management Support System, but on basic computer usage and the Windows operating system.

Mika maintained that the best results come from heavy buy-in from managers, from opportunities for reps to get plenty of follow-up training in the environment in which they actually work, and from emphasizing the creative benefits of the system and encouraging innovative uses.

Media Marketing Inc. & Geac/VisionShift
Formerly known as Ad Director, immediate, the integrated sales automation package from Media Marketing (http://www.immediatesfa.com), has a strong presence in the newspaper industry.

Running on Macs and in Windows, it's in use at more than 400 papers, with circulation ranging anywhere from below 25,000 to more than 200,000, including a recent installation at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

The product has several integrated modules: Sales Assistant (client profiles, contact management, work organizer), Media Analyst (cross-media comparisons), Research Manager (proposals, presentations, strategies), Ad Director (annual budget proposals, monthly ad schedules, maps with target market analyses, preprint proposals) and Creative Director (spec ads, creative strategies).

Knight-Ridder Inc. has decided to merge the capabilities of immediate with Attaché, the mobile ad software from Geac/VisionShift (http://www.geac.com/vs/).

Attaché, in use at Florida's Tampa Tribune (Media General is considering it for companywide use as well), allows sales reps to quote advertising rates in front of the customer. It draws from existing host-based ad systems to provide information on rates, contacts and ad history.

The Tampa-based company's product uses client/server technology, Windows NT and other Microsoft off-the-shelf tools.

The combination is in beta testing at Fort Wayne Newspapers in Indiana, a joint operating agreement where Knight-Ridder publishes the afternoon News-Sentinel. The merged capabilities will allow Knight-Ridder sales reps to tap into mainframe business systems for current customer information and merge that with the sales-oriented features of immediate.

SoftAd Inc.
Eleven-year-old SoftAd Inc. (http://www.softadgroup.com) offers Media Sales Excelerator to provide up-to-the-minute information for your sales and marketing force.

A Microsoft Solution Provider based in Mill Valley, Calif., SoftAd developed the module-based Excelerator with Microsoft development tools, desktop applications and BackOffice products. Excelerator includes Sales and Customer libraries, server-resident databases which link to the business legacy systems. This combined access allows salespeople to use their laptops to tailor sales materials to specific customers and markets.

SoftAd -- which has an established presence in 23 industries other than newspapers, with over 500 solutions for 150 companies in 13 languages -- recently allied with Media Data Technology Inc. to provide a system for the Oklahoma City Daily Oklahoman. The Oklahoman chose to automate in order to cut down on time its sales force spends on administrative functions and to increase the "face time" with customers.

At the Daily Oklahoman, Sales Excelerator pulls the rating engine out of the Neasi-Weber ADMARC mainframe and puts it on the salesperson's laptop.

"We get a real rating on each account," reported David Thompson. "When we quote a schedule now, its to the penny. It's a no-brainer for the sales force."

Thompson, advertising director at the Oklahoman, said the paper is now implementing four modules -- presentation, design, manage and compare. These will put creative services functionality on the sales force laptops, as well as expense and sales call reports and comparative media analysis capabilities.

Currently, said Thompson, the presentation function is funneled through the marketing department: "We want to explode the marketing expertise and channel it to the sales force."

Ultimately, he expects the new system to give the sales force 20 to 30 percent more face time with its customers -- and give its marketing department more time for market analysis instead of presentation.

"The sidebar benefit of the system," he said, "is that our professional image of our sales force is greatly enhanced."

The first quarter of 1997 will see the implementation of another six modules, which will offer correspondence templates, allow the sales force to create laptop-based proposals and download customer histories from the server on demand.

In the second or third quarter of '97, the Oklahoman will add rating and scheduling functionality. The paper is co-developing this latter functionality with SoftAd to meet the needs of its salespeople to schedule ads remotely from the field and to "cut down on the paper chase," Thompson said.

That chase goes on through the Oklahoman's 271 zones.

"We want a mapping system to allow us to have point-and-click functionality to facilitate preprints in those zones, or in any combination of those zones," said Thompson.

The Oklahoman has purchased about 60 seats, including those needed for its outside sales force, sales administration and information services department. Each sales person will have an additional phone line -- with Internet functionality -- so he or she can modem out or dial in as needed.

Cascade Systems Inc.
You're probably thinking, "Hey, I thought Cascade made output systems and archiving products." Well, yeah.

But a later addition to its product line is /W3, which extends the functionality of both Data Flow, its ad tracking system, and MediaSphere, its multimedia archiving system.

A moniker lacking aesthetic appeal, /W3 is a web site content manager that lends 'Net and intranet capabilities to both Cascade products and allows database information to be incorporated into any web page, then viewed using the Netscape Navigator browser or its equivalent.

Customers and ad sales forces can, with proper password authorization, view ad archives, or check where in the ad production process their ad sits.

Cascade, of Andover, Mass., isn't hawking this particular use of any of these products, but reports that newspaper customers have suggested its use to create a spec ad database, production tracking and proofing site, and an ad delivery vehicle allowing customers to upload ads to DataFlow and to verify receipt and status.

DataFlow and MediaSphere servers run on Sun SPARC workstations and Sybase database technology. Clients can use either a Mac or Windows platform.

MediaSphere uses Adobe Acrobat to index PDF files, providing search capabilities. You can visit Cascade's /W3 demo site at http://w3.cascadenet.com/.

-- L. Carol Christopher

Cascade
Systems Inc.,
(508) 749-7000,
e-mail: info@cascadeinc.com;
Electronic Data Systems Inc. (EDS),
(212) 403-6029,
e-mail: info@eds.com;
Gannett Media Technologies International,
(513) 665-3777,
e-mail: dzito@gmti.gannett.com;
Geac/VisionShift,
(813) 878-7867,
e-mail: vsinfo@geac.com;
Media Data Technology Inc.,
(413) 534-3307;
Media
Marketing Inc.,
(303) 404-7855;
Multi-Ad
Services Inc.,
(309) 692-1530;
SoftAd Inc.,
(415) 332-4704.

From THE COLE PAPERS, November 1996, Copyright © 1996, All Rights Reserved.