Challenge

The New York Times needed to automate its ad sales process and integrate all business divisions with the implementation of a CRM application. A traditional media organization entering the web 2.0 world, the Times had disparate business divisions with low visibility, needed an application that was web-based and available for mobile employees, and needed integration with back office systems: SAP and Lotus Smooth. The Times also needed to implement using minimal internal resources and ensure employee acceptance and adoption.

Solution

The New York Times selected Bluewolf based on its expertise with Salesforce in the media vertical. Bluewolf centralized all business units in one CRM system for visibility, provided an Ondemand CRM with mobile access, the Bluewolf Integrator tool was used for seamless integration to SAP, Lotus, Admark, and Bluewolf completed a change management program to ensure the highest user adoption. The successful implementation took 14 months.

Results

The New York Times moved from a decentralized, paper-based sales process to a centralized, on demand sales team, increasing sales productivity. Sales staff was able to generate more sales using the time saved on administrative work. The ROI estimate more than doubled their initial investment in the CRM application. In addition to improvement of other processes outside of the sales area, there is now a 360° view of all divisions and 90% sales team user adoption.