It’s vital in today’s competitive marketplace for media companies to use the right technology for their industry. This means you need an order management system (OMS) like Lineup’s Adpoint OMS.
However, if you want to stay competitive, you need to do more with your OMS than simply plugging it in and hoping for the best. A tool like Adpoint OMS can keep your business in the lead, but it’s a risk to assume your ad tech will do all the work on its own. Your OMS can be a game changer, but you won’t benefit from its potential unless you put in the time to understand how to make the system work for you.
Fully optimizing the use of your ad tech requires both engagement and understanding. This means knowing your OMS’s strengths and weaknesses, and getting your entire team engaged with the system. In this article, we’ll guide you to a better understanding of your OMS, and show you how to best interact with your new ad technology to leverage all it can do for your media business.
How your digital sales strategy interacts with your OMS
Adpoint’s OMS sits between its CRM and its Finance solutions, providing you with a seamless workflow and process that lets you manage your sales cycle from lead to order to cash. With its end-to-end functionality, you can automate your entire order management and fulfillment process from booking to billing. This enables you to control all of your bookings across multiple channels–digital, print, broadcast, events, and marketing services—from within one platform.
But for your OMS to function optimally, you need to understand how your digital sales strategy combines with the solution’s booking, billing, and revenue recognition and reconciliation functions. For example, with Adpoint OMS, you could explore how deal types such as Sold and Served, Automated Guaranteed and Preferred Deals, and Digital Audio work with your programmatic strategy.
Trust and engage with your system’s end users
Whenever you implement new technology, you need the buy-in of all your employees who’ll be engaging with the new system. It’s no different when it comes to implementing an OMS. To accomplish this, you need to help your employees adapt to the new technology. This means investing in training, as well as establishing an employee feedback process.
Taking the time to train your employees on your OMS can be vital to how well they’ll adapt to the new system. “Rather than thrusting new technologies upon employees, organizations should provide them with the right training and support to better use and adopt those tools,” advises the Harvard Business Review. The statistics back this up: 70% of respondents in a recent digital adoption survey said that providing staff with training on new tech increased their employees’ digital aptitude.
When it comes to your OMS, successful implementation requires end user feedback. Your end users are the ones operating in the system the most, and their input is crucial. You need to ask your people what’s working for them in the new system–and equally important, what’s not working for them.
Partner with your vendor
The ad tech you use is intimately intertwined with your business processes. This means your relationship with your vendor needs to go beyond the basic client-vendor relationship.
What should you do once you’ve obtained your employees’ feedback? It’s crucial that you let your vendor know what they’re saying about your OMS. Remember, your relationship with your tech vendor is a two-way street. Without access to this kind of necessary feedback, your vendor won’t be able to customize the tech support you need to maximize your OMS’s potential.
“The worst type of feedback you can have as an ad tech provider is no feedback at all,” says Neil Rigby, Digital & OMS Product Manager at Lineup Systems.
Lineup Systems’ Adpoint media sales solution, for example, assigns a Customer Success Manager to work with each of its clients. Once you’ve implemented Adpoint OMS, make use of your Customer Success Manager by holding monthly meetings with them. In addition to discussing strategies for using Adpoint in your media business, these meetings are an ideal time for you to relay any relevant employee feedback you’ve gathered about the functionality of the platform.
Choose a vendor that knows your industry
You know it’s ideal to establish a two-way partnership with your tech vendor. But how do you find the right vendor to partner with?
When it comes to choosing a vendor, you want one with an in-depth knowledge of your industry. Your tech provider should understand immediately what you need, and how its product can meet those needs. And a vendor who knows your industry will also be on top of upcoming industry changes and trends.
It’s also important to assess a potential vendor’s culture. “Seek a culture of innovation, customer service and continuous improvement,” advises Dave Bellando in this Forbes article. “Seek a vendor that rejoices in small wins and has a history of continuous delivery. Find a partner that is vitally interested in your success.”
Get Adpoint, the media industry’s most powerful OMS solution
With Adpoint OMS, you get the industry’s only cloud-based omnichannel order management solution on the market today. You’ll also be working with a vendor who knows your industry, and cares about providing you with the optimal tech solution for your needs. Book a call now if you’re new to Adpoint. And if you already own Adpoint OMS? Set up a meeting with your Customer Success Manager today.
