How Does a Media Publishing ERP Work?

You’re a publisher. The glitz, the glamor, the resource planning.

Yes, just like every other business, you need to look ahead to what type of resources you’re going to need next week, next month, in October (and all 11 additional months), and in the next year or three.

Therefore, just like every other business, it’s wise to look into purchasing an enterprise resource planner (ERP). What is an ERP? For publishers it helps you in your back-office operations, sales, customer service tasks, editorial, contractor management and so on.

For example, let’s say you put out a Christmas issue. Ad sales usually are greater during the holidays, so chances are good you may have more pages to fill, so you’ll need more content (this goes for online publishers, also, of course). So in spring or early summer you start looking ahead to hiring more contractors: writers, graphic artists, and so on. In other words, you start planning your resources.

A robust ERP can help you look ahead in order to figure out how many ads equal how much additional content, equals how many writers and other contractors needed. And so on.

The BIG ERP in the Room

So while you feel you understand the answer to “Why do I need an ERP?”, you may be wondering which one. So you look around for a well-known, reliable ERP and what pops up? Salesforce! And Salesforce is terrific. But it’s not made for publishers. Publishers hire a lot of contractors as well as employees They don’t sell “things,” they sell “ad space.” They create art and graphics. Grids. Pages. They take pictures. They have clients (advertisers), but they also have those important creatures, subscribers (No subscribers, no advertisers. No advertisers, no revenue.) And so publishers have specific needs not found in a typical ERP or even CRM.

The CRM AND ERP Specifically for Publishers? MagHub.

Of course you could customize non-specific CRMs to your publishing needs, and you certainly could change your own business processes to match up with the ERP. But why should you want to? Instead, using MagHub means you don’t have to: it’s the one tool that allows you to manage your media publishing business.

Take a look below at who benefits from MagHub in your publishing company.

1. Sales

•  Your sales team members can generate calls lists from opened/clicked emails.
• Create priority levels for their to-do lists.
• Use dashboard widgets for reports and next activities.
• Create detailed forecasts and reports.

2. Finance and Administration

• Control the approvals process for proposals, orders, invoicing and other billing needs.
• Automatically process credit card payments.
• Send tear-sheets with invoices and receipts.
• AP/AR.
• Use MagHub’s Quickbooks Online integration.

3. Distribution and Subscriptions

• Manage subscriber information.
• Use MagHub’s Subscriber Center and create branded subscriber portals (your subscribers will think you created this nifty subscription tool).
• Allow subscribers to renew automatically.
• If a print publication, set distribution drop-off locations and establish routes and route sheets.
• Integrated delivery locations with Google Maps.
• Create delivery reports.

4. Vendor and Freelance Management

• Customize portals with your company’s own branding.
• Allow freelancers and clients to upload artwork, graphics and content for approval/editing.
• Share the status of ad orders with customers.
• Let them peek at their order history.
• Process advertising/contractor invoicing and payments online and receive digital signatures for quick approval.

5. Marketing and Event Management

• Create email drip campaigns to gain new advertisers and subscribers.
• Help with event management and marketing.
• Send direct emails and receive notifications on clicks, opens, etc.

We hope you understand how a media publishing ERP works and how MagHub specifically can help you. If you’d like to learn more, request more information about MagHub.