A Middle Market Newspaper

IMPLEMENT ORGANIZATIONAL AND OPERATIONAL CHANGES in advertising sales and the ad flow process focusing on customer service, quality, and productivity performance improvements designed to generate increased advertising revenue, improve ad quality, and reduce adjustment and makegood costs

Project Focus

Designed and implemented programs to improve sales, customer service and overall performance.  Reorganized and streamlined work flows in Advertising Sales, Marketing, and Operations to improve responsiveness to customers, ad quality, ad production turnaround, and to increase advertising sales time and exploit new revenue opportunities.

Financial Benefits

• 4.4 % improvement in Advertising revenue
• 10 to 15% increase in sales time for sales representatives
• 18.6% increase in average ads sold per sales representative
• 13.1% increase in revenue per sales representative
• 29% increase in account load capacity for the sales representatives
• 63% reduction in advertising error rates
• 700% increase in the number of Spec Ads produced
• 23% reduction in Spec Ad design errors
• 30% improvement in Spec Ad turnaround time
• 85% reduction of abandoned calls in the Classified Advertising call center
• 100% of composed ads turned around in 24 hours
• 90% reduction in ad production backlog in Prepress
• 40% reduction in ad production errors

Key Changes and Operational Benefits

• Implemented a redesigned organization structure in Advertising and Operations, consolidating functions and departments to improve span of control and performance
• Streamlined processes, flows and routines, including the movement of all ad layout work to ad support
• Designed and implemented new roles, responsibilities and routine days for Advertising Sales, Ad Services and Prepress managers, supervisors, and staff.
• Developed and implemented quality and service standards in Advertising and Operations departments
• Implemented daily performance measurement through a “Key Indicator” reporting and communication system
• Designed and implemented an Advertising Sales Training program focused on selling techniques and approaches for traditional and non-traditional advertisers and products
• Designed and implemented a staffing and scheduling process to ensure appropriate staff levels based upon workload requirements
• Implemented Quality Assurance checkpoints at key points of ad flow to ensure the quality of ads being sold, created, and processed
• Implemented a new spec ad process that accomplishes team selling with spec ads to enhance current advertisers’ programs and sell non-typical advertisers
• Created an outbound Classified call center function with the primary responsibility for outbound sales calls
• Implemented a new credit code process to streamline credit approval
• Implemented a skills-based routing and assignment process in Prepress Composing
• Designed and implemented a Management Development program to strengthen management skills and practices at all levels
• Designed and implemented an Employee Skills program for an employee population of 250.  Prepared 10 skills trainers to implement critical skills modules and develop programs to meet future training needs

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