Are you too busy to think?

In knowledge-driven economies, "busy" is an outdated word that reflects a manual labor approach to work.

I too have spent most part of my life telling people how busy I am. Sometimes I'm just busy, sometimes I'm really busy, and sometimes I'm so busy I don't have time to think. But what do I really mean when I tell someone I'm busy? It's basically that I'm doing a lot of stuff. I could be busy doing it well or badly. The world is full of busy people, but there is a definite lack of quality planners and managers. We need to measure ourselves on how effective we you are rather than how busy we are.

Being busy is often an excuse for not doing something you should be doing. For me it has often been an excuse for not thinking, managing, and planning properly. Working hard is no longer the route to success it once was perceived to be. In an era of technology, outsourcing etc, success does require hard work, but what is way more important is smart work. Basically, all the hard work will be outsourced – to be done by leveraging technology, with just the smart work remaining.

OOHCRM would provide the top management of OOH media companies enough quality time to apply innovation and implement new ideas in order to grow their business and provide more value to their clients. They can devise strategies, set targets for coming quarters and years, evaluate current and past performance and take preventive and corrective measures that enable them to meet the target set for the company. Media owner's biggest challenge is 'operations'. I had a chance to visit dozens of OOH media companies. I found one thing common in all the companies. In almost all the companies I found even the top management being involved in operational and transactional issues. Which is not a good sign for the growth of the OOH industry.

Another issue with OOH media companies I noticed was, the problem to obtain necessary information, mostly the latest information is found lying in someone's head. OOH CRM acts as a complete repository of all enterprise knowledge and information. Apart from up-to-date inventory, OOHCRM keeps information about all the Customers and Contacts along with their communication logs, Leads, Opportunities, Forecast, site wise Profitability, Contracts, PO/WO, Invoices, Occupancy Chart, Posting and Scrapping orders etc. And to retrieve information, OOH CRM provides dynamic query builder for YOU to decide what you want from the system.

This will also help them serve their clients in better professional and accountable ways so that the clients find good return for the money spent. It is a high time OOH media owners justify the money spent by all the possible means since TV, Radio, Print and other media formats have moved much ahead in terms of demonstrating accountability towards the result. OOH can't afford to lag behind for too long.

Launch of OOH CRM

Finally OOH CRM - the first web based CRM plus ERP solution for OOH Media Owners - is launched on 18th. June 2009 at OAC, Taj Land Ends Mumbai India.

Currently most media companies big and small are managing their inventory either on excel based work sheets or some kind of in house developed disparate applications. Hardly any software vendor had found developing a product exclusively for OOH Media Owners lucrative enough. To see the sheer number of interested buyers on the day of launch had surprised me pleasantly. Practically OOH CRM will enable the media Owners of all sizes to bring efficiency, improve productivity and ensure growth by acquiring new customers. OOH CRM incorporates the industry best practices in the areas of marketing, sales and operations. It automates the inventory updates in absolutely real time, submits proposal on customer's brief in minutes, book sites online, tracks creative collection, generates posting orders, generates sales/work order, generates invoice etc. OOH CRM also has query builder that takes care of dynamic MIS reporting.

Accounting module is not yet a part of OOH CRM since many media owners are comfortable with their current accounting application.

OOH CRM is available in 'on premise' model where the application can be installed within LAN and also can be accessed over the internet from anywhere.

Having updated inventory all the time, is a very useful tool in the hands of sales force in order to close the deals quickly.

The applications had been made very affordable for the media owners of all sizes. Brainchild had agreed to do customization up to 20% for free of cost. This should be good enough for most of the media owners. Our official website is not yet updated with all the features of OOH CRM. Please let us know in case you have any questions on this forum or write to khalid@brainchildbs.com.

Regards,
Khalid