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.
The 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.
Reports will display.
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(grey), and all Favourite Reports available to you will display, as designated in Aquira.
this is an available Favourite Report
