CASE STUDY: Optimizing and creating efficiencies by migrating Newscycle Circulation to the cloud

March 2015

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OVERVIEWSince 1975, Swift Communications has been a preeminent provider of community news and information, offering 30 publications in seven states across the United States.

Each Swift publication offers a pertinent and comprehensive service to its readership, and each Swift property is faced with the unique challenge of increasing circulation, optimizing retention, and reducing the burden upon newsroom staffs.

BACKGROUNDWith a relationship dating back to the late 1980s, Swift has spent decades relying on Newscycle to provide turnkey solutions for its publishers that are adaptable to an evolving media landscape. Nothing speaks to this longevity better than Swift’s current circulation system: Newscycle Circulation.

Since Swift’s first installation in 1993, what is now Newscycle Circulation has evolved, adding industry-driven functionality and measurable revenues to Swift’s properties. Never has it been easier for circulation departments to manage subscribers, carriers, and billing all in one place; never simpler to combine resources in the effort to unify print and digital.

For Swift Communications CFO Bill Waters, the longstanding partnership is a brass tacks issue: “We just don’t think there’s anything out there that is better or even comparable,” adding that he feels Newscycle Circulation is the “shining star” of the Newscycle software suite.

So it’s understandable why Swift was eager to work with Newscycle to take their on-premises system and migrate to the cloud, boasting significant success

over the past 18 months.

IMMEASURABLE BENEFITSNewscycle Circulation helped automate numerous month-end tasks for the Greeley Tribune in Colorado. It was an opportunity for the Swift property that Circulation Manager Anne Fulton overseas to shift focus on other revenue generating priorities, like sales and retention.

“If I had to return to manually completing those tasks,” says Fulton. “It would be detrimental.”

The migration also afforded Greeley Tribune the chance to partner with third-party marketers to help leverage new business leads via its

circulation database in the cloud.

“If I had to return to manually completing those tasks, it would

be detrimental.”

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Through one-stop access to subscriber account information and demographic data, Fulton says it was easier to pinpoint targets for upsell opportunities.

Newscycle Circulation allows publishers to spend less time on repetitive tasks, less effort targeting prospects.

CLOUD MIGRATIONNewscycle and Swift Communications tackled a lofty project, migrating properties from on-premises data storage to the cloud. The idea was to take disparate systems and unify them to improve access for Swift’s staff.

“We had four or five different databases with different setups that we were trying to combine into one,” says System Support Specialist May Freiberg. “That posed its own challenges.”

But with the assistance of Newscycle’s implementation team, led by Sara Otremba, Swift is now able to host and manage multiple properties in a single database, easily accessed via the cloud.

“Sara gave her all for us. Her knowledge was excellent,” says Freiberg, adding that Sara selflessly gave her time to the project and was always available at odd hours for support. “She truly ‘owned’ our upgrade and its success was important to her.”

Freiberg knows it is rare to cultivate such a potent vendor relationship but, “Sara Otremba is certainly one of those people,” adding, “From our perspective, Sara Otremba is a highly valuable resource.”

IMPROVED SPEEDSwift wasn’t merely content to consolidate its properties to Newscycle’s cloud environment. The company also wanted a reduction in time devoted to rote processes, including billing and reporting.

Swift got just that.

“System performance really improved,” says Waters. “We’ve been really pleased with that. And dramatic cuts of time - not just minutes or seconds, but hours.”

Circulation departments and business offices operate with increasingly smaller staffs, and the hours Newscycle Circulation can save employees from previously taxing processes is invaluable.

“A lot of our staff’s time was spent running reports, especially at month-end,” says Freiberg, adding the migration process has significantly reduced the timeframe publications dedicate to billing.

“We can finish a report now in two hours that used to take up to four. That’s been a big help.”

“System performance really improved. We’ve

been really pleased with that. And dramatic cuts of time - not just minutes or

seconds, but hours.”

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Swift is earning personnel flexibility, measured not in minutes but hours, as a plethora of reporting, billing, and processing procedures

are optimized within Newscycle Circulation.

STABLE BILLINGOne of the chief concerns for publishers relying on subscription revenue is managing a seamless billing process each month. Swift Communications is no different.

With Newscycle Circulation, offering iServices’ customer service portal, eBilling, and revenue opportunity via combo

subscriptions, publishers have a feature-rich solution to optimize their billable accounts, making accounting and billing a

foregone conclusion.

“We pretty much know we can get through the month-end process as planned, on schedule,” says Waters. “We don’t have to hold our breath

at night and hope we get through it.”

CONCLUSIONFor years, Swift has seized numerous opportunities to leverage Newscycle Circulation’s software functionality, always on the cusp of design considerations and product evolution.

Swift is again seeing the benefits firsthand following Newscycle’s cloud migration – saving time and optimizing processes has reduced staff burden and improved productivity.

© 2015 NEWSCYCLE Solutions. All rights reserved.

www.newscycle.com

“We can get through the month-end process as

planned, on schedule. We don’t have to hold our

breath at night and hope we get through it.”

About NEWSCYCLE SolutionsNEWSCYCLE Solutions, which was formed by the combination of DTI, SAXOTECH, Atex AdBase and MediaSpan, delivers the most complete range of software solutions for the global news media industry, including news content management, advertising, circulation, audience, and analytics. NEWSCYCLE Solutions is a trusted technology partner serving more than 750 media companies with 8,000 properties across more than 30 countries on 6 continents. The company is headquartered in Bloomington, MN and has U.S. offices in Florida, Michigan and Utah; with international offices in Canada, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.newscycle.com.