Newspapers & Technology recently spoke with John Barry, president of Brainworks Software about the company’s approach to the evolving newspaper industry and the state of the newspaper advertising marketplace.

 N&T: What are the key factors a newspaper should consider when purchasing new advertising software?

Barry: There are many things to consider, including:

•Does the software give you the ability to generate significantly more advertising revenue than your current system?

•Does the system addresses both your present and future business goals? Specifically, it should empower you to significantly increase revenue from your core business models while providing the innovation, flexibility, features and platform to allow you to develop profitable new revenue channels.

•References, references, references. Talk with current customers about their experience. Unless technology is properly implemented and supported, you’ll never gain the benefits of a new system. Do vendors deliver what they promise?

John Barry

•A modern system should be able to cross-sell across multiple print products of varying mechanical sizes and styles as well as online, direct mail, preprints and solo mail.

•A new system must allow you the option to consolidate multiple properties out of a single server or one server per strategic cluster.

•Investigate the company’s capability and track record for software maintenance and technical support.

•Make sure the vendor uses modern platforms and industry standards: Pure Windows applications on a SQL database, etc. Avoid old technology — it makes it too difficult for the vendor to respond to change.

•Buying a new system is an opportunity to implement new business processes. You should evaluate how they assist you in implementing new workflow and business processes that will take full advantage of new functionality. A new system should, by definition, provide new ways for you to make money in your phone room, with your outbound reps, on the Web, via outbound marketing, and with preprints and direct mail. Ask potential vendors how they plan to help you make the most of these opportunities.

•Inspect what you expect: Make sure the system you choose can track your revenue in a very granular fashion: by publication, customer, sales rep, market sector, ad type, date range, actual over budget, year-over-year comparisons and any other criteria relevant to your business.

•The system should not dictate the business processes, but rather support the change process.

N&T: How have you seen the marketplace change?

Barry: There is more demand to generate revenue with fewer resources in the face of fierce competition.

Today it’s all about the ability to creatively drive revenue and not just taking orders and sending a bill. Brainworks had a lot to do with leading this initiative. It started with conversations with ad directors, brainstorming new ideas and then turning those ideas into new feature sets, implementing these new tools and then tracking the very impressive revenue gains. Now it is coming full circle — publishers who call us often have already spoken with a customer who is generating revenue gains with their Brainworks system.

N&T: Revamping advertising sales in today’s market seems like an intimidating task.  How do newspapers minimize the risk often associated with change?

Barry: The key is to generate more money from existing business models, then use part of the increased profits to fund initiatives in new, more experimental areas. For example, go for a quick hit by using a “down-selling” approach, or increase up-selling options and implement cross-selling in the phone room. You can also deploy a Web portal for purchasing classified ads and use outbound marketing to reach out to existing and potential advertisers. Use some of your increased profits to fund deployment of new revenue channels, such as an auction site or a direct mail package.

N&T: How would you characterize Brainworks’ software from an IT standpoint?

Barry: First, it’s safe. We use all standard Microsoft technology (SQL Server, IIS, .NET, etc) and we utilize it in standard ways, so we behave in a safe and predictable manner.