Rolling out a corporate portal with CRM for the Lux media holding

Lux Broadcasting Company is a group of radio stations, an online newspaper, a TV channel and a network of websites whose combined reach places the holding among the five largest internet holdings in Ukraine. As the business grew, the old CRM could no longer keep up with it: it was effectively no more than a client database, while the company needed a single environment for sales, communication and task management. Aniart carried out this rollout — from deploying the portal to training employees in Lviv and Kyiv. Here is how it all unfolded.

The Lux holding and the limits of the old CRM

For more than 25 years Lux Broadcasting Company has been literally in plain view and on air for a wide audience. Today Lux Broadcasting Company includes the radio stations Lux FM, Lux FM Lviv and Radio Maximum; the online newspaper zaxid.net; the channel 24; the websites football24.ua, 24tv.ua, lux.fm, beztabu.net, maximum.fm; and the Lux advertising agency, which holds a leading position in Western Ukraine.

As the business and the volume of tasks related to supporting client-facing business procedures grew, Lux Broadcasting Company came to need a move to a new software environment with CRM capabilities. The situation was complicated by the fact that, at that time, the developer announced the end of technical support for the current version of the program the holding was using, along with a change in pricing policy for the new versions.

It is worth mentioning that the company had completed more than a thousand tasks in total to improve the functionality of its existing CRM — yet, despite this, the system still did not match the holding's needs. And since the new version of the program, for all the cost of moving to it (licences plus implementation), in no way guaranteed that every request the company had would be met, the expert group at Lux Broadcasting Company analysed the possible alternatives: BaseCamp, BPMOnline, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, and corporate portals with a built-in CRM.

At first we were looking for a system in which we could quickly set up automation for our rather specific client-service business processes — plus a classic CRM. All the other capabilities were welcome as pleasant bonuses. Ideally, we wanted a single information space for all employees, not just for the sales department specialists. It had to be an environment where people could talk to each other about work matters, set tasks, manage projects, and track employees' activity and working hours. One of the most important requirements for us was the ability to work with the service online — from any device and in any location.Oleksandr Denishchuk, Chief Financial Officer, Lux Broadcasting Company

In the end the choice fell on a corporate portal with a CRM as the optimal program and on Aniart as the optimal contractor. Four things were the main arguments in favour of the platform.

Once we had chosen the system, we faced the task of finding specialists who were responsible and professional at the same time. A thorough knowledge of the platform had to be combined in them with successful experience of delivering enterprise automation systems. Two serious arguments spoke in favour of Aniart — experience and qualifications: Aniart is the only Enterprise partner of the platform vendor in Ukraine across the entire product line. That reasoning was enough to choose Aniart.Oleksandr Denishchuk, Chief Financial Officer, Lux Broadcasting Company

While CRM for small business had long been a well-rehearsed task for Aniart, implementing a CRM for a large company — all the more so for a media holding — promised plenty of surprises. And they were not long in coming. But first things first.

What the client required from the new system

Given market trends and the evolution of its own needs, the client set Aniart the following development tasks.

1. Business process automation. Service delivery (orders, approvals, invoices, documents, debts, order changes); media plan approvals; notifying employees about client payments and outstanding balances.
2. An "organiser" for day-to-day operations. Current work, regional cooperation, marketing activities.
3. An environment for collaboration. Messages, documents, tests, clips, media plans, placements, development of special products.
4. Document search. Quickly finding the right document within the overall body of files.
5. Sales department efficiency. Improving the performance of the sales managers.
6. Detailed reporting. More detailed than in the previous CRM.

How development was organised

Development was broken down into iterations. Communication took place through weekly scheduled meetings on Tuesdays, from 12:00 to 13:00. Meeting minutes were written up in Confluence. The software environment for communication was JIRA, where the team worked along three lines.

• Tasks were set.
• Questions were formulated.
• Time spent on development tasks was logged.

The project development itself was carried out in four stages.

Basic integration: what Aniart did

• Deployment of three versions of the portal: a development version, a testing version and a production version (the last two on the client's server).
• Setting up backups.
• Importing the company structure.
• Importing the list of employees' personal data from the accounting system.
• Setting up employee authentication via AD.
• Organising the toolset for task management and task control — with reports on the performance of every employee, every department and the organisation as a whole. The system is built on self-organisation: each employee can set tasks for themselves, naming their manager and other interested parties as "observers", sees their own metrics for the reporting period and tries to improve them — that is, strives to be effective while observing their own contribution to the company's work.
• Setting up a tool for organising working groups — for example, teams performing a particular piece of work. This makes it possible to establish communication between members of a working group, including those spread across different departments and offices of the company.
• Creating a document library, which makes it possible to organise a dedicated section for collaborative work with documents. The section can consist of several subsections (libraries), and access rights to them can differ for individual user groups and working groups.

Problems that came up along the way

The human factor caused the most difficulty.

• Underestimating the scale of involvement required in the work on the program: the project manager on the client's side was loaded with other duties and could not give the project enough time, which led to delays — in approving specifications and so on.
• Difficulties with QA — a tester only joined the project at the final stage.
• Changes among the stakeholders, in line with which approaches were revised.
• Changing requirements on the client's side as the company's management learned more about the program's capabilities.

Incidentally, it was not only the requirements that went beyond the plans: the client had to move all employees to the Chrome browser, which fully supports the new system, and for those who could not work with Chrome for technical reasons — to upgrade their hardware and software.

Technical problems — being dropped from the "Employees" group, reindexing of companies and contacts, session lags, issues with the corporate drive and file copying, the inability to add to a custom field with a CRM entity selector, searching documents by user fields, unstable video, problems with screen sharing and many others — were resolved as they arose, or else the initial requirements were adjusted.

Results of the work

1. Portal. The corporate portal was installed and users were set up.
2. Data. Data from the previous CRM and the accounting system was imported.
3. Integration. Data exchange with the accounting system was implemented: the employee directory, the counterparty directory, invoices.
4. Business processes. Processes were built out: advertising placement, invoice issuing, payment data, document management, closing barter deals, HR records, contractors, contract processing, managing competition winners (including across the websites).
5. Projects. Work with projects was organised through groups.
6. Leave. A business process for managing leave was rolled out.
7. Invoices. Calculation of the outstanding balance on issued invoices was rolled out.
8. Planning. Planning by manager was moved into the accounting system.
9. Corporate drive. Connected for everyone, with training on how to use it.
10. Hardware support. A technical support system was implemented through requests raised by employees inside the portal.
11. Journalists' rights. Rights to manage contacts and companies were granted.
12. Org structure. An organisational structure was created.
13. Instructions. The necessary instructions were written and video lessons on the details of the work were recorded.
14. Training. Employees were trained to work with the program in Lviv and Kyiv.
15. News and HR. Publishing company news and running ticket giveaways were organised.
16. Surveys. A user survey was carried out and the directions for further refinements were adjusted.
17. Access rights. A rights policy was developed and all rights were granted to users.
18. Refinement plan. A plan for the next refinements was drawn up.
19. Updates. A plan for installing system updates was drawn up.
20. Desktop version. A procedure for updating the portal's desktop application was developed (IT).

What lies behind the concise report items

The "activity stream" makes it possible to handle the most varied tasks with the ease typical of communication on social networks. With it, every employee of the company, in any of its offices, is aware of everything that is going on — from birthdays and holidays to messages and announcements. Employees can "like" events in the stream and comment on them, work with tasks, browse photo albums, and send messages to colleagues straight from the stream with their own files attached.

It is hard to overstate the volume of reference information that became available to Lux Broadcasting Company employees: contacts, a phone directory, a detailed company structure, the ability to search for an employee by query. Information on companies, deals, invoices, products, payments and placements, history, reports, documentation, the sales funnel — all of it is used so actively that it is hard to imagine how the company's employees managed without it before. The "Leave request" section turned out to be the most in demand of all.

The "task board" has also become an active space within the company: after all, setting a task takes literally one click — you just write what needs to be done, by when, and who is responsible for it. And then monitor how it is being carried out. Groups are used actively on the portal, an absence schedule and "educational" work are maintained, and electronic requests, feedback and technical support are all in play.

Before and after

We are not aiming to cover everything — the goal is to show the difference.

And much else besides, which ultimately comes down to saving time. Calculating the economic effect of introducing the new system into the company's work is not part of our task, but even one hour of working time saved per employee per day adds up to a very great deal.

The system in action: a real deal, broken down

Let us look at how the new CRM works using a working example from the company's day-to-day life — a real deal. So: deal No. 37920 in the company's catalogue. The subject is the placement of advertising materials on various media resources. The client is "XXX", No. 47221 in the company's database.

The "XXX" page shows information about the manager currently responsible for working with this client (with a direct link to their profile, complete with photo, contact and other information and the ability to message them or make a video call right inside the system), about the date of their assignment, and the history of placements and tasks for this client.

The deal page gives exhaustive information about four advertising campaigns for "A", "B", "C" and "D" running from 06.05.17 to 02.06.17 and from 10.05.17 to 01.06.17 (status "In progress"), about the prices (9877,14; 16592,94; 17728,2 and 16821 UAH) and about the discount (58%), and it also holds attached files in mp3 (voice advertising) and xlsx formats that can be downloaded right away. The total amount of placements for "XXX" is calculated automatically here as well, and the linear chart shows the stage of the deal — "Service delivery".

The linear chart shows that this is the penultimate stage before the deal is closed, and that Planning, Making contact, Negotiations and Budget approval and contract signing have already been passed. This chart is displayed not only on the deal page but also in the second column of the general list of deals, which makes it easy to take in the overall picture quickly. Once the deal is closed, the chart will fill up to the end and change colour from blue to green. The charts for all deals automatically flow together into the sales funnel, which gives management and employees an up-to-date picture at any moment in time.

The reports show information about won deals, deal volume by contact, company and manager, expected sales, overdue deals, and the distribution of deals by stage. At the same time, all the data can be edited at any moment, so any changes are reflected promptly, and every action in the system is recorded in the History.

Conclusions from the example above

• The CRM module of the new Lux Broadcasting Company system gives sales managers broad capabilities for working with clients and deals, and gives the company's management prompt oversight of their subordinates' work.
• The company does not use most of the CRM module's capabilities to the full, or does not use them at all, which reveals hidden resources for increasing the efficiency of Lux Broadcasting Company employees by mastering the system's potential.

Conclusions, in people's own words

With the help of a platform adapted to our needs by the specialists at Aniart, we managed to bring all our staff together into a single environment and implement every business process that is critically important for the company. Thanks to the professionalism of the Aniart team, moving from one business management service to another did not cause any disruption to our work. First we rolled the system out as a corporate social network for communication between employees in all our offices, and then we set up business process management and a CRM for the sales department. While working on the project we became convinced that, at the moment the new system went live, only a small share of the tools and capabilities for effective work were being used, so we plan to integrate the program further into our company's work and to roll out new business processes.Oleksandr Denishchuk, Chief Financial Officer, Lux Broadcasting Company

Working with Lux Broadcasting Company was interesting because it was full of non-standard tasks. What is more, the people responsible for the project on the company's side, with whom we worked in close contact for many months, made a very good impression on us with their constructive approach and their high level of erudition and culture — it was a pleasure to work with them. To sum up briefly, I can say that this project is convincing proof that the platform makes it possible to solve the most complex and most specific tasks in the field of enterprise management automation.Valentyn Kertychak, Project Manager, Aniart