Aquira

by Max Davies

Our browser-based Aquira2GO product handles CRM and Sales with real time access to bookings and inventory data. The emphasis is on Sales Management with interactive forecasting, call management and configurable onscreen reporting.

The latest Forecaster features in Aquira2GO are the result of substantial collaborative work with our existing customers. In particular, we went through the entire sales workflow from the perspective of sales managers and concentrated on the weekly “Work in Progress (WIP)” meetings.

We found that these were typically being held using a combination of sales reports from Aquira and separate, manually maintained spreadsheets containing targets and forecasted sales. Needless to say, disparate spreadsheets and disconnected workflows can lead to mistakes and to inefficient reporting at all levels, so we resolved to develop a process that would centralise targets and forecasts alongside real time sales data. We wanted to do this in a way that complements current processes and enables sales managers to discuss forecasts with individual team members and update figures interactively (and instantly). We also wanted to ensure that senior management, sales managers and team members will have real time access to forecast sales information at all times.

As well as providing a one stop shop for sales pipeline information, our new Forecaster grid enables sales managers and team members to review and update progress and forecasts in real time. It also allows users to seek out potential opportunities by looking at historical sales and identifying (for example) seasonal clients who spent money last year but have not yet been approached.

Another aspect of the WIP meetings is coordinating the movements of team members and keeping an eye on the sales pipeline. Aquira2GO empowers sales managers in many ways. For example, through the provision of a sales focused Meeting Planner showing team member appointments, including a google maps* journey planner that a manager can work on together with the team member to maximise efficiency.

Additionally, Aquira2GO shows simple, colour coded tiles for all the team’s clients, each of which shows information such as Account Manager(s), Address, “Last Call:” (with details of date, purpose and outcome) and “Last Contract:” (with start and end dates). This allows team members and managers to check on the status of a client, lead or prospect at a glance.

Aquira2GO is designed to provide your sales teams with on the road access to all the information and tools they need to operate efficiently. It also ensures that sales managers are always up to date with what their team is doing and that senior management can rely on the central Aquira database to provide up to date information from a single source.

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.

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.

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  Reports will display.

next to the Report Title indicates this is your Favourite Report to display on your Dashboard.

You can then click Favourite to 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:

this is an available Favourite Report

this 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 checked, you can check  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 unchecked, you can check 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.