Realize Cost Savings

Cary, N.C. (Dec. 11, 2008)—As the national economy continues to struggle, magazine and content-driven Web site publishers are next in line to feel the pinch, as ad revenue from hard-hit industries dries up. To help stem the tide, many publishers are searching for new and innovative ways to cut costs, maximize revenue and help recession-proof their companies.

Global Media Solutions, a provider of information management software for media companies, offers a variety of solutions that can help publishers save money, increase tactical efficiency, and gain long-term strategic strength.

"We have a growing customer base of publishers around the world, and are seeing an increased demand for organizational efficiency," says Michael Tucker, president of Global Media Solutions. "Publishers are asking themselves, 'How can we do more with less?', and many are looking at software infrastructure as a possible answer to that question."

Streamlining Ad Management
Typically, publishing operations utilize and adapt various ad hoc programs to help them with prospecting, order placement, traffic management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), billing, etc. These independent programs are functional but not fully integrated, making ad management and data mining difficult manual processes.

Global Media Solutions' Contract for Media is a fully integrated multi-user advertising management, CRM and billing software system designed for content/media companies. It streamlines the business processes associated with managing advertising customers and their ad placements in print, online, on-air, and for events.

After implementing Contract, one of Global Media's clients, a publisher with several lifestyle and trade magazine titles and Web sites, went from having two full-time traffic managers to just having a part-time person in that role.

Contract's tactical strength is derived from its functions as an advertising order processor and a robust CRM system. Its strategic strength comes from its ability to quickly analyze customer and product data across multiple dimensions (e.g., customer category vs. ad sizes purchased for a defined time period).

"Instant analysis of company sales data and performance gives our clients a tremendous advantage in the marketplace," says Tucker. "They know instantly what their best-selling ad placements are, who their top prospects are, and what advertising initiatives are driving customer response. Most of their local competitors do not have similar information and are operating more or less based on the gut feelings of individual sales reps."

Optimizing Intellectual Property
How much time is wasted digging through boxes of magazine archives looking for a specific article or ad that ran months or years ago? How long does it take to track down a photograph or a reprint for a customer? What happened to a designer's graphics files when they left the company?

"Intellectual property locked in content has no value unless it’s accessible," says Jakub Görner, president of the company's European office. "Digital archiving facilitates instant accessibility, adds value to the content through repurposing, and increases editorial efficiency."

Global Media's Naxos Archive is a sophisticated management system for all of a publisher's digital assets. It automatically captures, tags and catalogs digital files from multiple sources. Users then have access to those assets instantly via any Web browser. Naxos can tag and index such content as images, PDF files, audio and video clips, text and word processing documents, desktop publishing documents and more.

Increasing Web Presence
Traditional print publishers can generate additional revenue streams through online ad sales on their Web sites. But how do they best leverage existing audiences and complement their print content to create a dynamic Web site that attracts and keeps a loyal group of online visitors?

"We helped one of our clients go from zero Web presence to more than 35,000 unique monthly visitors in just three months," recounts James Wilson, Global Media Solutions' senior Web architect. "With our Web expertise and software, we've helped them build an online community that keeps readers coming back for new content, and makes this audience very attractive to advertisers."

Global Media's WebExpress Publisher is a complete Web publication and content management system (CMS) that is highly adaptable and explicitly designed for media companies. It can be utilized for the creation and maintenance of any Web site, as well as the orchestration of content delivery to multiple sites under a publisher's media umbrella.

WebExpress Publisher facilitates such advanced functions as community forums, polls, user ranking/scoring, e-commerce, targeted Web advertising, blogs, syndicated content, social networking, newsletters, photo galleries, podcasting, file uploads/downloads, and more— all without huge technology overhead or staff.

For more information about Global Media Solutions or its full suite of software products, visit www.media-sol.com.

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