back | print

Brainworks' CircSmart™

Circulation, Distribution and Marketing Software That Maps Success

• Over five years in development
• Engineered for reliability
• Advanced mapping capability
• Currently in use at 50 newspapers worldwide

Circulation is the lifeblood of newspapers in the battle for media market share. In today's marketplace, the competition for market share is fierce and relentless. Newspapers need innovative circulation and distribution tools to compete aggressively against the growing ranks of media choices. Brainworks creates newspaper software that is sales-minded and customer smart to help newspapers compete and win. Brainworks' CircSmart™ is an innovative circulation, distribution and marketing system that helps newspapers extend their market reach. CircSmart™ results from Brainworks' fresh thinking approach to solving newspaper's most challenging business problems. Built on Microsoft's .NET technology, CircSmart™ is the next generation system to bring you into the 21st century.

Brainworks' CircSmart™ starts by locating the customer before any task is performed. CircSmart™'s effectiveness begins with a database that is CustomerSmart™. By entering only minimal information, the customer service representative will see the subscriber or dealer's profile and status. CircSmart™ also eliminates customer record duplica- tion to simplify difficulties in locating customers. The graphical interface offers a familiar desktop experience that turns new users into power users in a few hours.

View Screen Shot

CircSmart™ is 'map aware' to provide interactive maps down to the street level, to zero in on the exact location of customers. With a single click on the map, you can select the exact information you need. For example, a map showing dealers or carriers on a distribution route can have their supply orders accessed directly from the map by clicking on the points. CircSmart™ uses spatial analysis to locate customers within any boundary Boundaries could be anything, including route, ABC, advertising zone, census, school district, county, or any geo-demographic boundary. All of which could be 'layered' on top of each other to show remarkable insights between the boundaries that were never before understood.

It is no longer enough to know where your customers are. Knowing who your customers are has become the competitive edge in today's media market. Newspapers must identify their highest valued subscribers and prospective subscribers. Family profile, income and education levels, buying patterns, and news interests are some of the key indicators for developing circulation marketing strategies. CircSmart™ provides geo-demographic insight by combing geo-location maps with demographic data. Brainworks' software can help you capture consumer trend and lifestyle information. With this insight, your newspaper can develop and fine-tune targeted marketing promotions to attract and retain new customers and drive dollars to the bottom line.

Inserts have become a major element in a newspaper's value proposition to advertisers and readers. CircSmart™ manages the entire inserts process from sales to delivery all within its intuitive map-based interface. Inserts can be booked directly into the system from a map. Customer service representatives can select insert placement by publication, zone, municipality, zip code, etc. Select areas by radius from a center such as a convenience store or newsstand. Use demographic data for selective targeting that can also span multiple publications or editions. CircSmart™ automatically calculates quantity required and cost and can be used for customer quotations or confirmations.

CircSmart™ provides extensive analysis and management of all aspects of your newspaper's circulation. The software manages subscribers' accounts overseeing payments, expiration dates, stops, starts, vacations and pre-authorized or debit procedures to the amount of earned and unearned income related to a subscription. Once return figures have been entered accurate sales figures are available immediately.

On screen ABC chart plots any two audit periods side-by-side and shows target, previous and current daily circulation, required daily circulation to meet previous target. This is not just a post-mortem display but a what-if planning tool for new promotions and marketing strategies. You can monitor the status of the week's businesses in real-time and proactively address trends, shortfalls, and opportunities for increased circulation.

CircSmart™ has it both ways, a complete subscriber sales system along with a sophisticated subscriber service center. CircSmart™ will select the best offer available including alternative packages enabling easy up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. Package costs are automatically calculated for any combination of publications. CircSmart™ is a subscription selling tool that helps you more responsive service to the subscribers and dealers and higher revenues for your newspaper.

In order to keep your subscriber's happy, you need a world-class service center. Complaints are a significant cost to business in both money and goodwill terms. The first step to reducing this cost is to understand the nature of the complaints. In many cases however, patterns and trends in complaints can only be realized visually. Maps provide the means to identify these patterns in which reports cannot offer. The built-in maps, along with charts, in CircSmart™ give these vital clues that are needed by business to take further action.

Brainworks broad range of sales-minded newspaper software can improve all of your revenue centers. Brainworks offers CustomerSmart solutions for Circulation, Distribution, Marketing, Display advertising, Classified advertising, as well as billing, accounts receivable, contracts, ROP ad layout, classified pagination, marketing, sales force automation and web/palm integration. CircSmart™ is a major component that may be implemented as part of a unified Brainworks installation or as an independent circulation, distribution and marketing system.

More and more newspapers across North America, rely on Brainworks software to improve the level of service they can offer to their advertisers and subscribers. Brainworks' customers enjoy measurable sales increases that result in a better bottom line for their newspapers.

To find out more about how Brainworks' CircSmart™ software can help drive revenues for your newspaper, contact Brainworks today to arrange an online or onsite demonstration.