English | 中文
Client Background
Listed in New York Stock Exchange, the client is a leading provider of global business news and information services. It publishes many reputable economic journals, reviews, newspapers, research reports... and even indexes of various stock markets and economic figures. It also operates community-based information franchises. It provides news content to radio stations in the U.S. Since 1882, the Group's flagship publication, which was founded in 1889, has a total print circulation of 1.66 million. The client's name has been synonymous with accuracy, integrity and trust.
Business Challenge
In the client's environment, before the system implemented, the major business operations were performed by an outdated subscription management system ("old system") that purchase out-of-the-box from overseas and a number of in-house-developed applications (Island Systems) that cover limitations of the old system. Owing to the fact that the old system is a closed or "Black-box" system, the client cannot easily and flexibly enhance the system and make use of the information in it for data analysis in response to rapidly changing business needs. Even though the Island Systems fulfill some deficiencies of the old system, the client find it hard to perform business operations efficiently as there is much redundant information that comes from different sources at different times. Many manual processes are required to be performed by the IT Department to maintain normal business operations. This significantly reduces the enterprise's productivity and efficiency.

The system need to be operated 24 hour on line across all Asia Pacific Countries for all the client's customers to place and manage their order. It is a typical B2B application. Timely and accurately process of the ordering information and high satisfaction of Customer Relation Management become the keys for the success of this exercise. Further, interfaces to existing accounting systems and generation of reports are the must for the implementation.
Solutions

The proposed system is designed to replace the old system with additional functionality to collect Marketing Campaign Records and Customer Relationship Management History for analysis in order to provide quick response to rapidly changing business needs.

An enterprise portal was also established to improve the operation and collaboration efficiency among various departments allocated across countries in the Asia Pacific region. Thus, the client's customers and business partners can place publication orders through the internet at anytime with a user friendly interface.

The proposed system consists of the following modules:

Integrated Subscription Management and Fulfillment Module
Users can access all related activity for a subscriber including orders, payments and subscriber profiles. A centralized ordering process is maintained in this module, this consists of four types of orders, Individual Order, Bulk Order, Newsstand and Consignment.

Marketing Management and Analysis
Grouping subscription marketing campaigns and promotions together gives the client opportunity to come up with new and innovative ways to acquire more subscribers. Prospects and customers can be segmented, randomized and assign to campaigns based on attributes defined in the database.

Customer Services
The Customer Services module provides full contact management, incident call logging (e.g. complaint-handling, general enquiry and outgoing calls for marketing activities) and action tracking to allow the Customer Service Department to manage customer relationships easily and efficiently.

Integrated Billing and Accounting System
This module automatically calculates agent commission on maintained rules. It does billing and tracked payments status. And most importantly it provided the account interface files for existing Accounting systems (APPAC and People Soft).

Localization and Web Interface
The application offers fulfillment for subscription-based Web sites and give customers real-time access to their files over the Internet. Whether customers order through the Web site or other channels, their related information such as billing or delivery address, e-mail address or contact phones will be updated centrally.
Benefits
The solution greatly benefits the client in increasing marketing opportunities in the e-Business world, minimizing operational costs, improving operational efficiencies, and increasing employee productivity.

Firstly, the solution integrated old system and the Island Systems into a single system to remove redundant data and applications. Secondly, the client's management and employees can automatically and flexibly retrieve business analysis and reports. Thirdly, the solution allows the client to keep track of marketing information and do direct customer relation management.

  • Place new orders through a secure and user-friendly Internet gateway at anytime
  • Retrieve business analysis and reports in a flexible way as required
  • Capture in depth customer information for CRM
  • Share information internally and externally in a secure way