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Get Certified, Get Noticed with the new RCS Academy

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How did you get started in radio? Chances are that you hung around a station, then watched and learned from other people. But Drew Bennett, National Sales Manager of Scheduling Products at RCS says there are two things wrong with that approach. “First, it’s possible that the people you learned from didn’t know what they were doing. Second, if they did know, they might not tell you because they wanted to have the edge.”

Meaningful, formalized education in the broadcast industry has always been hard to come by. That’s why RCS has launched RCS Academy, a way for you to learn about GSelector, Zetta and Aquira, and get certified for what you know.

As Bennett explains, you don’t even need to leave home: “The courses are online and self-paced. They’re broken down into segments with an exam on each. Once you pass, you earn a micro-degree. For example, when you master the library section of GSelector, you get a library badge and micro-degree. When you have completed all the chapters, you can take the final exam. If you pass, you’re certified.” The cost for online courses ranges from $300-$600.

Bennett adds that there are numerous benefits to certification. You can order a diploma to hang on your wall, a lapel pin, and digital badge that can be used on professional sites such as LinkedIn. Your name and contact info are also listed in the RCS directory of ‘Super Users’, where potential employers can seek you out.

RCS Academy is rolling out in 2019. By the end of the first quarter, the GSelector course will be available online. That will be followed by comparable online courses on Zetta and Aquira. The next step will be moving the program to college campuses, as Bennett explains: “These courses will also be available for college credit. Our first campus will be Texas A&M in College Station, Texas, and we will continue to expand to other schools.” He adds that each college will determine the tuition fees for the courses.

Aquira: A Powerful Traffic, CRM and Sales Proposal Toolkit

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As you pull into the parking lot of your little radio station after the morning commute, you pause to reflect on how well things have been going lately. With GSelector and Zetta handling your programming and automation, things have been running like a Swiss watch. Ratings are up, the new morning guy seems to be working out, and the future looks like nothing but blue skies.

Why would you want to mess with perfection by purchasing new traffic software? You’ve heard of Aquira, and probably some of the other programs that promise to streamline traffic. But it’s just your two stations and a webstream, you’re not part of a group that owns hundreds of stations. How could a traffic system like Aquira make that much of a difference at your operation?

First, Aquira is not just a traffic system. It’s really a CRM system for radio sales that integrates all the moving parts into one software package. Accounts receivable, budgeting and forecasting, enterprise reporting, sales management and report writing are all part of the process with Aquira.

Aquira was created by people who know that in radio, we’re all a little different. Our idea of the most productive CRM may be the polar opposite of yours. And that’s OK, because you can customize Aquira to work the way you do. Take writing reports for example.

There is just no one set of system reports that can work for everyone. That’s why Aquira includes a Report Writer and wizard. Not only can you use it to write reports in a traditional, grid, pivot grid or chart format, your RCS support team can also create reports for you and import them directly into your database. And that’s not all.

When you purchase Aquira, you get wizards to facilitate things like exports to finance and playout systems. That’s important, because these systems can change frequently, and when they do, you don’t want to reinvent the wheel. With Aquira, there’s no worries, the wizards will create the correct file format for your new finance and playout software as fast as you can wave a magic wand.

Aquira can also generate and manage a lot of data, and data has value when its shared, but only with the right people. Not only can Aquira restrict the data that users like Sales Reps are allowed to see, but it can also restrict the areas of the application they are allowed to go to. The data security can also be set up so that clients or agencies can have their own logins.

Aquira enables you to create detailed rate cards so rates can be stored for spots, charges, sponsorships, costs and digital. The database also stores the rate card value and the actual value it was sold at. That way, you can get detailed reports on how much users are discounting. Warnings can be put in place when certain thresholds are passed, so that sales managers or traffic know if a booking is below the recommended rates.

Another way that Aquira lets you do traffic your way is with Attributes. Attributes are a bit like adding your own field to the most utilized tables in Aquira’s database. These fields can be anything from a new Date Attribute, (for something like a Client Birthday) to a new Lookup Attribute (where you might want to setup different Campaigns, or Areas in the database for reporting purposes). The Attributes not only appear as new fields in screens like Clients and Proposals but they immediately appear in Reports so you can begin reporting on your newly configured field.

Your sales staff needs to maximize their time in the field. Your sales data lives on Aquira, back at the station. With Aquira2GO, that’s not a problem. This browser-based application is part Customer Relationship Manager, part sales proposal tool. You can use it to remotely access data, build a proposal with real time access to your station inventory and then present it to your client and get an electronic signature to close the deal during your meeting.

Being a traffic system, Aquira’s primary touchpoint with the other RCS products is Media – that’s the commercial audio and its metadata – with the playout systems and Traffic Logs with either a playout system or music scheduling system. Aquira can synchronize its Media metadata with our Zetta, NexGen or Master Control playout systems, allowing traffic users to drive the production process. Aquira also brings the audio information, once recorded, back from the playout system to allow for auditioning of the commercial audio in Aquira or online in Aquira2GO.

Out of the box, Aquira can send traffic logs to any of our playout systems or our music scheduler; GSelector. When an overnight as-run log is produced from the studio, Aquira will automatically ingest this data for full-loop reconciliation.

You can start small with Aquira and it will grow with you. Aquira supports everything from single station to multi-station or multi-location broadcast groups. Bottom line, you can manage the scheduling and billing of advertising orders across multiple stations from one central location.

You can also run Aquira on your own computer system, or have it deployed in the Cloud using the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) model, the choice is yours. Large clients with remote offices can also take advantage of these cloud-style deployment options to host Aquira themselves at a head office while ensuring that easy access is available to all their remote workforce.

Sometimes things just don’t go as planned, and that’s why RCS always has a tech support professional ready to speak with you, 24 / 7 / 365. And that’s not all. As a customer, you can also join the RCS Community, a moderated discussion group that provides a forum for discussion, tips, technical support issues, friendly banter focused on improving your use of our products and latest innovations.

RCS helps TEABBA to Broadcast From Paradise

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When we say that RCS software is used by stations on the furthest reaches of the planet, it’s no exaggeration. For this report, we will travel to Warruwi, Goulburn Island. It’s a tiny spec with about 300 inhabitants located 5 Km off the coast of the Northern Territory, Australia. Maung is the main language, and 90% of the population are Cook Islanders or Aboriginal. But despite the remoteness and size of Goulburn Island, it does have its own radio station.

TEABBAThe station is part of TEABBA, (Top End Aboriginal Bush Broadcasting Association) a group of 29 RIBS (Remote Indigenous Broadcast Stations) spread across the Northern Territory. They have begun to broadcast as a large community network. TEABBA airs regular programs from both its Darwin hub studio and the community stations by using dial-up program lines. However, the old analog dial-up modems have given way to the latest digital devices that can deliver broadcast quality programs over a regular phone line. Part of the massive infrastructure upgrade involves bringing the Internet to locations which have no access, or very limited access. At the same time, mono transmitters are being upgraded to stereo.

The Darwin hub utilizes Zetta and GSelector for automation and music scheduling. Aquira is slated to be online by the end of the year to add commercial integration. When the project is complete, logs will be created in Darwin with GSelector, and will be replicated out to the station in each market, which already has Zetta installed. Once Aquira comes online, commercials and community service announcements will be scheduled which target each market’s local issues. Two of the indigenous communities, Warruwi and Beswick, have already gone live, with the remainder to follow soon.

Zetta makes it easy for these RIB sites to broadcast over the entire TEABBA network. Stations currently build a “MiniLog” for the time that they are broadcasting to the network. Each of the 29 stations usually broadcasts 2-3 hours a week to the entire Northern Territory.

TEABBA is not the first indigenous broadcaster in Australia to use Zetta, GSelector and Aquira. They decided to go with RCS based on the excellent user feedback from their indigenous partner stations, Caama Radio (8KIN – Northern Territory), Kool N Deadly (3KND – Melbourne) and BlackStar (QRAM – Queensland). Together, these stations broadcast to over half of Australia.

No Traffic Workflow Is The Same- That’s Why Aquira Is Perfect

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by Max Davies

Having worked with multiple commercial radio products, I can vouch for the fact when it comes to sales, traffic and accounting workflows, no two companies are the same. Of course, this means that these companies have different views on how stations, clients, accounts, spot types etc should be grouped and categorized – in fact, they even have different thresholds for things like probability of sale. Add to these regional variations like “industry station codes” and you have a potentially infinite number of data combinations and configurations.

Dealing with this kind of diversity used to involve the client having to either:

a) compromise and use a limited set of extra undefined fields (if they even exist)

b) pay for bespoke development

c) develop and maintain a separate in-house reporting suite (often in Excel)

In fact, some of our competitor products still have this problem … This is NOT the case for Aquira …

It’s very easy to overlook the importance of features – especially when they’ve been baked in pretty much since day one. Attributes in Aquira is definitely one of these features.

The ability to set up user-definable attributes is an incredibly useful feature as it allows customers to tailor many parts of the Aquira system to suit their unique workflows.

In order to manage the quality of input and to aid workflow, Attributes can have different types (including LookUp), can be set as mandatory and can be unique.

The really cool thing though, is that these attributes can then easily be set against (one or more) tables.

Just click on the table, save your changes and …

The attribute becomes available (in this case for Sales Team) …

Attributes can also have actions such as “open in FaceBook” or “Email”

The above screen shots are just a taster. As with all Aquira functionality, I fully recommend using our pretty awesome F1 help for a more detailed explanation:

Go on, you know you want to!

Max Davies oversees Aquira development and our New Zealand branch.

Boost Your Productivity in Aquira

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Max Davies here to share a couple of examples of very useful albeit long-standing features within the Aquira UI. These are seemingly “little things” that can actually make a HUGE difference for anyone managing their traffic.

Aquira has the ability to have multiple screens open at the same time with each screen showing as a jelly bean shaped button at the foot of the display. This workflow may seem like a bit of a no-brainer to those of us who are familiar with the 21st century but for a lot of users, this departure from the archaic “close down what you’re doing to go into a different part of the product” workflow is a massive time saver.

Aquira radio traffic multi-screens
Multi-screen management in Aquira

Another useful feature that should get special attention is the fact that some of the browse screens instantly show totals and subtotals for returned results without the need to generate separate traffic reports or opening the individual items. What’s more, you can easily cluster/group these results (by dragging fields into the header area) and see the subtotals dynamically update. You can also choose which data fields to display (and sort them). Again, simple enough and not necessarily a new thing to RCS products, but a very handy time saver that not all traffic software products can do!

data management in Aquira
Grouping and sorting data in Aquira

Aquira Improves Large Network Experience

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Over the past twelve months the Aquira development team has put a lot of effort into further enhancing the product in all areas related to managing a large network of stations.

There are new features in the Logs Browse screen which allow you to Attach Media, Giveaway Fillers, Bump, Move or Delete spots from selected Stations and Days without having to individually edit each Log. The flexible Station Picker that was available within Contracts has also been made available throughout the application in areas like Logs, Reconciliation and Clocks. Our Station Picker allows you to customize your groups of stations easily to help manage daily, weekly and monthly functions with ease. Using one mouse click you can select all 200 Stations within one Network to be able to Attach Media or Giveaway Fillers.

You might like to select by location, genre, demographic. It is completely customizable using Aquira’s powerful Attributes. This unique way of selecting stations has also always been available within the contract/order entry which also makes booking spots, charges, sponsorships and web lines on large networks possible with less clicks or keystrokes. Another enhancement is the ability for Reconciliation files to be automatically imported at a time specified to assist with this process in large Networks.

Customizable Dashboard Reports by User

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In 2.12 Dashboard Reports are now customizable per user.

A radio organization can control what reports are seen by using various levels of security. Access is restrained within your organization by assigning users into different groups of Users (User Roles).

This is now further enhanced by allowing Users to login to Aquira2GO our browser based Sales application and customizing their Dashboard so reports they are interested in are displayed.

When you log in, your Dashboard Favourite December 2016: Aquira Fav Checked Reports will display.

December 2016: Aquira Star Checkednext to the Report Title indicates this is your Favourite Report to display on your Dashboard.

You can then click Favourite to unchecked December 2016: Aquira Fav Unchecked (grey), and all Favourite Reports available to you will display, as designated in Aquira.

The Star next to the Report Title indicates whether it is an available Favourite or your Favourite:

December 2016: Aquira Star Uncheckedthis is an available Favourite Report

December 2016: Aquira Star Checkedthis is your Favourite Report

You can filter which of the available Favourite Dashboard Reports you would like displayed on your Home > Reports page.

  • With Favourite December 2016: Aquira Fav Checked checked, you can check December 2016: Aquira Star Checked on any available Favourite Report to remove it from your Dashboard. These Reports are not deleted, they are merely hidden from your Favourite Dashboard Reports, you can display them again if required – see the next comment.
  • Alternatively, with Favourite December 2016: Aquira Fav Unchecked unchecked, you can check December 2016: Aquira Star Unchecked on any available Favourite Report to add it to your Dashboard.

You can Toggle using Favourites to display all available Favourite Reports or your Favourite Reports to select or deselect Reports displaying on your Dashboard as you wish.

Product Profile: Aquira

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Good technology always makes your job easier. Aquira provides much needed efficiency in today’s radio world. Where fewer people are doing more tasks, Aquira offers tools that will enable all users to work smarter.

Aquira Online allows the sales staff to work from any location– whether from their car, at home, on the beach or anywhere you can take an internet-connected laptop. Management can approve orders inside the online module, providing immediate processing of orders by the business and traffic departments back at the station.

Aquira interfaces with Microsoft Outlook to schedule appointments into the system calendar, providing details on account and sales rep activity.

August 2013: Aquira Online

Dynamic log scheduling allows for real-time inventory and revenue reporting. As orders are entered and approved, users have access to immediate scheduling times and dates. Avail color shading on contract lines provides immediate display of inventory sellout.

Sales reps can be given access and rights to only the area you want them to have, from contract entry, reporting, inventory analysis, revenue or collections. This frees up traffic and accounting so they can focus on other tasks. Statements and invoices can be automatically emailed to clients allowing for faster delivery.

The Attachments area found inside Contracts is an efficient way to store production orders, insertion orders or any items pertaining to that specific order. Attached production orders can be processed inside of Aquira -enabling your production staff to easily access spot information and do their job more efficiently.

The Audio Required area provides a quick view of media due dates so that the production department can quickly view immediate spot needs. All departments will find ways to work more efficiently with Aquira.

Isn’t it time we start to use the technology that is available to make our job easier and, oh yeah, make more money while we work smarter?

Real Time Avails at Your Fingertips by Jo Saré

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Wouldn’t it be great if you could take the headache and ambiguity out of a Station’s Live Avails / Inventory Usage?

In our next generation Traffic product Aquira we have solved this problem for you. Empower your users with all the important data at their fingertips in real time.

July 2012: Real Time Avails at Your Fingertips

In Aquira, Avail Levels indicate when a daypart is sold out or nearly sold out. The levels use a percentage value, which when exceeded, changes cell color in the spot booking grid. This helps staff manage the orders and avoid over selling time in a selected daypart on a particular day for that station.

Avail Levels may vary according to the user’s login. For example, a sales rep may be told avails are sold out at 90%, but a sales manager approving that order might have his avails set to 95% to allow a buffer.

Here is how you can configure Avail Levels in Aquira for your organization:

The first step is to customize the colors to visually alert your users at various stages of Inventory usage. Navigate to Setup | Global Settings | Contract | Spotline Avails. In this example I have chosen the typical traffic light colors (also known as stoplights, traffic lamps, traffic signals, signal lights, robots):

  • Green for Go (Proceed with booking spots as Inventory is Available)
  • Yellow/Amber for proceed with caution (Warning to the users the Inventory is getting close to being sold out)
  • Red for Stop (Warning the user there is no Inventory available)

July 2012: Real Time Avails at Your Fingertips

The next step is to set your percentage values for each station/daypart combination. Navigate to Setup | Avail Levels. Here you are able to set the threshold lower for higher demand dayparts or stations allowing you a different buffer to cater for proposals the Sales Department might currently be trying to secure.

July 2012: Real Time Avails at Your Fingertips

The final step is to Navigate to Setup | Users | Detail and select the Avail Level appropriate for each user in your database.