Over a decade ago, we witnessed a surge in early digital media adopters, especially publisher networks. Those who wanted to leverage Salesforce to manage both sides of their business–the traditional ad sales side focused on insertion orders and the publisher network side whose mission was to build revenue-share relationships. Given the generally tech-savvy user base in digital media, we were able to invest a majority of our energy in creating sound architecture and UX, knowing that adoption would not be an uphill battle. Salesforce for digital networks was an excellent place for us to start before taking on the more complex nature of traditional print publishers.
Strong Beginnings
Having completed many projects with several digital networks, our clients began facilitating conversations with executives at more traditional print organizations and sharing their success stories. Display advertising was becoming more prominent, but print advertising was still the clear cash cow, and marketers were still trying to figure out the long-term play for mobile. Referrals and endorsements led us to win business with a handful of well-known print publishers, including a project to deploy an end-to-end Salesforce architecture and design across 20+ distinct print titles and digital properties for one of the world’s largest publishers of magazine media.
In comparison to pure-play digital networks, mixed media publishers posed an exciting challenge: how to architect Salesforce that simultaneously worked well for both print and digital sales while integrating logically with disparate order management systems. Working with more significant, complex organizations, we also discovered that formal management consulting focused on process improvement and change management was critical. Deep consulting workshops were highly practical before finalizing designs and building prototypes.
Our Approach
Embracing our management consulting approach, these larger media clients operated with a refreshingly firm commitment to corporate governance, providing our team with consistent access to formal and informal executive steering committees. Our teams tackled large-scale deployments involving multiple integrations, large data sets, multiple code bases, prospect-to-cash flow improvements, extensive testing, multi-regional end-user training, and consistent change management activities. In an industry where projects are often under-scoped, we were able to prove it was possible to deliver CRM for ad sales not only on time and within budget but also without business disruption.
After success with larger print organizations, we took on additional segments such as agencies, ad tech, sports, television, out-of-home, radio, streaming, content acquisition, and rights management, among others. Salesforce had now become mainstream for most ad sales organizations regardless of size. Media has continued to prove to be extremely complex in comparison to other industries looking to leverage a platform like Salesforce for ad sales. We have enjoyed the challenge of developing designs to apply to different industry segments and revenue models.
Success and Continued Growth
V2 was at the forefront of integrating the first ad sales customers to the Salesforce platform, designing and deploying complex and successful ad sales CRM platforms, spanning a range of sectors in media.
Many years into our consulting work for well-known global brands, we are still growing through interactions with new and existing clients. We bring a well-informed and proven perspective on the topic of Salesforce for ad sales.
We have observed in recent years a wave of poorly launched deployments largely due to media organizations choosing to invest too few internal resources or electing to partner with consulting organizations that lack proven experience in media.
In the complex media process flows, data, and integrated platforms, cutting corners is a recipe for failure and frustration. It’s important to invest the proper time, money, and resources if you want to build a world-class, Salesforce-centric cloud architecture.
