Amplifying i-media’s Digital OOH Efficiency
In the UK’s Motorway Services Area (MSA) sector, i-media stands out with its transformation in out-of-home advertising. Moving from static displays to dynamic digital screens, they’ve made significant strides in the OOH space, powered by strategic technological partnerships. According to a survey by MAGNA and Rapport, digital roadside billboards continue to dominate the OOH sector. i-media, having screens across the UK’s MSA network, is a testimony to this trend, given the rapid growth of its digital assets. However, scaling from 50 full-motion D48 screens to an inventory of 650 screens within a short span brought its own set of challenges. Managing campaigns on spreadsheets became a mammoth task, prompting the shift to the Broadsign platform for better automation. The challenge then arose: how to integrate i-media’s CRM, Salesforce, with Broadsign seamlessly? Enter Brysa. Recognized for our expertise in system integration, we were approached to bridge the gap. Tapping into Broadsign’s API, we integrated Salesforce with i-media’s campaign management workflow. This move eliminated the need for manual scheduling, and campaigns created in Salesforce reflected instantaneously in Broadsign. This integration reduced the operational workload significantly, leading to a 40% increase in i-media’s operational efficiency. More than just the automation, the integration empowered the sales team with real-time insights into inventory availability. This transparency bolstered trust and reduced response times to advertisers and agencies, enhancing overall client relationships. Our collaboration with i-media is a testament to Brysa’s commitment to providing tailored solutions in the OOH landscape. We pride ourselves on understanding and addressing specific challenges, offering solutions that not only solve immediate concerns but also add long-term value. As i-media continues to expand in the digital OOH sector, they can rely on a robust technology stack that evolves with their needs. With partners like i-media, we look forward to more such opportunities to drive efficiency and growth in the industry. A version of this case study appeared as an article posted at broadsign.com published on 18-Oct-2023
Click-based opportunity to accounting: eliminating gaps between sales performance and financial accountability
Our client runs a sales-focused organization where the sales team are incentivized (through commissions) based on the closed sales achieved on a monthly basis. It’s a fast moving environment with aggressive targets and a results-oriented culture turning over around £1m pounds every month. The finance team of the organization were three in number and faced downstream challenges of ensuring the sale numbers recorded by the sales team are indeed the right numbers hitting the books. The FinOps team used Sage50 and unsuccessfully tried Sage200 to streamline the finance processes. Among other challenges they faced, the most important one concerning the sales team was the time it took to complete the month-end accounting. This lengthy latency – which the finance team couldn’t help though they were working very hard – left all parties frustrated. The senior management had to wait to get a pulse of the business performance, the sales team weren’t sure about their commissions and the finance team were stressed. The finance director and the controller consulted us on the situation and after assessing the AS IS state of the org suggested the finance team to consider bringing the accounting system inside Salesforce establishing a single-source-of-truth. The change was scary since the team had to move away from the comfort of the known and into the realms of unknown. However, the leadership knew that all change is uncomfortable and implementation of a finance system within Salesforce will lead to long-term growth and will relieve short-term pain points for the organization. We considered FinancialForce, Accounting Seed and Sage Intacct (which had integrations to Salesforce) as potential solutions. FinancialForce was ruled out on price and Sage Intacct on the grounds of the need of API integration to Salesforce (which is another potential point of failure) and the client selected Accounting Seed. Image 1: Accounting Seed system natively within the Salesforce org The implementation process involved reorganizing the client General Ledger Accounts and slightly restructuring their Accounting Processes. It also involved extensive work on data migration which we helped the client with by managing the templatized ETL process. There were a few gaps in the reporting functionalities that the client had gotten habituated to. However, since Salesforce offers flexible build capabilities we build custom reporting functionalities within the system for the FinOps team to get their reports through clicks. Many rounds of build demos and adoption training were provided to the client with Brysa’s team of certified chartered accountants who were experts in Accounting Seed. The system changes that the sales team faced were negligible. They continued on following their sales opportunity processes withing Salesforce as normal. Once the implementation was completed, the FinOps team ran the finance and accounting processes in the outgoing Sage and incoming Accounting Seed systems in parallel for a few weeks. This was challenging since it involved the team stretching beyond their BAU – however, the excitement and the promise of a more streamlined system meant the team morale was high and they learned the new system quickly. The sales team were also advised on the impending finance changes. Though their processes changed little they were looking forward to quicker validations of their numbers from the finance team. Image 2: Ability to create Invoice from an Opportunity by one click The adoption of the system in the production org to run the day-to-day finance lead to immediate efficiencies. The FinOps team no longer had to get extracts of sales information. They could see everything in the same system. They also needn’t recreate account records in the finance system which saved them time. The team estimated that more than 30% of their time doing repetitive, avoidable tasks were saved because of the new system implementation. Image 3: Real-time P&L statement made possible by single-source-of-truth A simple illustration of this efficiency involves the process of raising an invoice. Where the team used to do multiple keystrokes in the past, they can now simple click a button in the opportunity record (invisible to the sales team) to raise a fully templatized, customized invoice and email it to their client finance contact from within the system. Not only that, the finance team could also now post the entries into the correct ledgers with clicks that made it possible to get accurate, real-time P&L and customer statements. This led to a collaborative approach between the sales and finance teams ensuring the sales team’s data input increased in accuracy and in return the finance team were able to provide validated numbers back to the team quicker.
24×7 ad trafficking: time and money for publisher focusing on core competencies
Our publisher clients in the digital media and digital out of home media typically own multiple assets or varying formats and specifications. While their primary focus is usually on continuing to grow their list of real estate they can offer for brands to advertise in and to ensure maximum occupancy of those real estate, many of them were also handling the trafficking and scheduling of the creative ad assets to their real estate. The latter not being their core competency has the potential and usually very quickly became unmanageable without significant investment of leadership and management time and effort leading to lack of focus on the primary goals. Thus, our publisher clients faced loss of revenue, stressed teams and unhappy brands. The key challenges with trafficking of creative ad assets and scheduling of them in the publisher’s CMS are manifold. Some of our clients own real estate of varying specifications. Some of their out of home estate can play motion, while other can’t. Some need to be of a certain resolution while other of another. A smorgasbord of variations mean the creative agencies that supply ad copies to the publisher find it easy to get lost and end up supplying ad assets of wrong specs. Image 1: Iconic real estate like the Shoreditch Canvas demands perfect ad deliver This presents the second challenge to the publisher presenting them with a situation where they have to meticulously check all the assets delivered and where there are errors communicate back to the creative agencies and the paying brands any delays or loss of publishing space because of the errors. Thirdly, even if it were made as the responsibility of a dedicated operations team, the challenges of coordinating with the sales team to avoid any penalties or explanations of errors meant a significant management and leadership time and energy was spent on nitty-gritties that can be managed by specialist provider of such operations. Brysa offered specialised ad trafficking services to the publishers. We set up a team whose core competency would be build and run a streamlined process that achieved the following: efficient handling of variations on the specifications; clear, timely communication with all the stakeholders; measuring performance internally by setting up and following an SLA-driven process. We quickly achieved not only proficiency in the ad trafficking processes of digital media and digital out of home media industry, we also became very good at scaling up, which helped our publisher clients to expand the range of options they provided to their paying brands. Image 2: Real-time tracking of ad trafficking process in Brysa desk enables peak performance Because of the comfort and efficiencies we delivered, our publisher clients now sell trigger/ event based campaign playout entrusting Brysa to delivery accurately to brief. They also have become more hands-off in the ad trafficking process safe in the knowledge that even if the creative agency delivers ad copies to incorrect spec, we will manage the situation and escalate to the publisher when necessary. Lastly there is also strong reporting provided by us that helps the publisher clients track our continuously improving performance. A combination of the above factors have helped the publishers focus more on their core competencies which is to grow their real estate and sell more ad spaces in them.
