Companies often look to advertising as a way of boosting sales by increasing the public's exposure to a product. Most companies do not have the staff with the necessary skills or experience to create effective advertisements; furthermore, many advertising campaigns are temporary, so employers would have difficulty maintaining their own advertising staff. Instead, companies commonly solicit bids from ad agencies to develop advertising for them. Next, ad agencies offering their services to the company often make presentations. The real work for ad agencies begins when they win an account. Various departments within an agency-such as creative, production, media, and research-work together to meet the client's goal of increasing sales.

There is no doubt that the Internet will shake up distribution channels and disrupt the status quo in every category of the Advertising & Media industry. But it is only recently that Advertising and media services companies are—for the first time since the advent of the Internet boom—approaching the Internet and its many distribution and profit opportunities with prudence. With broadband access and availability still lagging—albeit with gathering speed—this is the ideal time for companies to explore their Net readiness in preparation for the changes ahead. Although several top Advertising & Media names have rolled back or cut their Internet offerings, there is still plenty of Internet activity in the industry. In fact, for the first time, the lull is allowing companies to approach the Internet and its many distribution and profit opportunities with a level headedness that was missing during the heady times of Internet mania.

Experience K-Soft
Our Offshore Software Development Centre in India K-Soft India has build a complete application suite covering the Client Servicing Application, Financial Application and Customer Relation Management Application for one of the largest advertising agencies in India who has always been on the forefront of technology. All its users are very much aware of the importance of computerization. They were among the pioneers in automation in India.

The Client Servicing Application is developed for the automation of their Client servicing activities and operations giving an edge over its competitors, as it is able to furnish lots of information, which is important to handle and implement a campaign, and also makes the client comfortable by planning and scheduling each activity of the campaign. It also takes care of the Branch operations between New Business development to Client Billing and Supplier Invoice passing.

Primary Features of our Solution

• Web-Enabled Application
• Full-integration of all the departments
• Three-Tier Architecture (Java Swings, EJBs, Oracle 8i)
• Modular Structure
• Status Monitoring of the Job, Bills, Proforma etc across the departments

Application Technology

• Architecture: Three-Tier Architecture – The Business logic resides in the Middle Tier (Oracle Container for Java – OC4J), which makes it easier to handle and modify the application.
• Front End: Swing Based Java Components developed using Oracle JDeveloper
• Middle Tier: Oracle Application Server with Oracle Container for Java.
• Bank End: Oracle 8i

The CRM Application which is a Content Delivery & Collaborative Solution offers a customized solution completely integrated with the organizational website

The entire approach to the solution has been divided into two parts. First is to understand the entire interaction process of an ad agency with the client and thereby understand the development of creative concept and implementation of the same. The challenge was also to understand the way an advertising agency and it's various departments' function. Second is how these processes can be web-enabled with the help of latest technology so that the entire interaction process can be carried out on the Internet without any bottlenecks. The solution requires no new desktop software or servers. A customer simply visits the advertising agency's Web site and plays media through standard browser & media players.

This Application allows Client to have an edge over its competitors, as it is able to furnish lots of information, which is important to close a deal, and also makes the client comfortable by projecting an open environment. This also allows them to give customized packages to client.

The other important feature of this application is that the knowledge base of the company is stored in an ordered fashion and can be retrieved very easily. This will ensure that there is some level of reusability and thereby reduce costs.

The concept of that application is that the Client wants to Store all the documents in this site and make it accessible to the employees as well as their Clients. The entire site is based on a role access mechanism wherein authorization is required. So if the user is a Manager then he has access to most of the links. If the user is a Data entry operator he has access to the Administration module.

Primary Features of our Solution

• Web-Based Application, which makes it accessible anywhere-anytime.
• Transparency to the clients as well as the employees.
• Enhanced security features to have limited and allowable access of the resources.
• Contains the details of a particular campaign for a client, which enables a manager to make an analysis. Details like Presentations, creative outputs, Guard Book, Press Clippings etc maintained and accessible to the client.
• News/ Awards/ Research etc are made available to the Client.
• Discussion Forum to allow the client and the company to interact with each other. Media schedule for a particular campaign are accessible to the clients.
• Discussion forum have the facility of simple and advanced search mechanism.
• Site also has information about the competing media companies and also the schedules of the various advertisements that are to appear on a certain date.
• Site has global utilities like the Discussion Forum, Collaboration Module (which allows the user to make presentations to the client and also chat with the client. It also has the facility to talk using VoIP). Also Net-Meeting features has been embedded.

Benefits Delivered

• Gained strategic and economic benefits associated with CRM by integrating their organizational capabilities – structure, processes and skills – into the integrated platform with the help of CRM technologies to become more customer-centric.
• Use of collaborative tools and discussion forum has lead to quality and disciplined discussion between the client and an ad agency.
• Minimal or No investment in training of the users of this application since the entire application is web-browser based.
• It streamlines communication otherwise done by telephone, fax and e-mail, greatly reducing the cost of sharing information across project and work teams.
• As a single, central hub for large numbers of people, the application significantly reduces the lines of communications between different parties, including major customers, increasing productivity and saving time.
• It serves as a central record between collaborating parties, reducing errors in communication.
• It acts as an intellectual repository and enables knowledge management.
• It can be equipped with Web-Cams and multimedia devices, to keep everyone up to speed on, say, the most current status of the project.

Application Technology

• Architecture: Two-Tier Architecture
• Front End: JSP 1.2, JDK 1.3
• Web-Server: Orion Web-Server
• Back End: Oracle 8i

Everyone in an organization can benefit from the specific information gathered from assessments of employees' and customers' perceptions. Leading organizations use this feedback to improve personal and departmental performance along the path of becoming a truly customer-centric organization. Rely on experienced facilitators and change management consultants to help you kick-start your efforts and lead you through the implementation of systems to collect opinions, perceptions and priorities from employees and customers. Then, use this information to gauge training, performance and human development needs. You'll be on your way to developing a world-class customer-centric organization.