With TangoRESPONSE local TV sales teams can eliminate spreadsheet-based proposal workflows by centralizing inventory information, standardizing proposal inputs and moving revisions into a shared campaign-management environment.
Televisionation—Friday Fireside: Tango Media Systems President, Rob Bochicchio - Friday Fireside Features: Tango Media Systems President, Rob Bochicchio
Media companies keep getting combined, which sounds efficient, until someone asks the ad sales team to package all the ad inventory. Suddenly, one campaign means dozens of markets, multiple systems, competing formats, and enough spreadsheets to qualify as a small data center. So how does a sales team turn all of that into one clean, coordinated multi-market campaign an advertiser can actually buy?
The Friday Fireside welcomed Rob Bochicchio, President of Centriply, parent company of Tango Media Systems, which recently renewed its technology partnership with AMP Sales & Marketing Solutions, the national multimarket advertising sales division of Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc.
Rob is one of the people helping linear TV compete as a true multi-market advertising platform, because “we merged the companies” should not be followed by “now please merge 47 spreadsheets by Friday.”
The application they use, TangoRESPONSE, gives media companies a way to bring inventory from multiple markets together into coordinated campaigns, making it faster to sell and easier to for buyers to respond. Building complex local plans and offering four or five different versions allows sellers to offer linear television campaigns with the speed, scale, and accuracy buyers expect from big-tech platforms.
Spreadsheet elimination is not primarily an IT initiative. It is a revenue initiative that helps local television move at the speed advertisers now expect. Spreadsheets remain popular because they are flexible, familiar and easy to distribute. They are also one of the primary reasons complex local television proposals take so long to create and revise.
A spreadsheet is useful for analyzing information. It is much less effective as the operating system for a multi-market advertising business.
Why Spreadsheet Workflows Break Down
Spreadsheet-based sales processes create several predictable problems:
- Multiple versions circulate at the same time
- Rates and avails become outdated
- Formulas are accidentally changed
- Market names and inventory descriptions vary
- Changes are difficult to trace
- Data must be repeatedly copied into presentations
- Revisions require significant manual rebuilding
- Knowledge remains with individual employees
- Import and organize fragmented inventory information
- Apply consistent market and inventory definitions
- Build multi-market campaign proposals
- Compare rates and audience opportunities
- Manage revisions within the same workflow
- Produce standardized outputs
- Preserve campaign history
- Reduce duplicate data entry
The risks increase as more markets, sales teams and inventory sources are added.
Replace Files With a Structured Workflow
Eliminating spreadsheets does not necessarily mean prohibiting every spreadsheet. It means preventing spreadsheets from serving as the primary source of truth.
The organization needs a structured platform where inventory, audience information, rates, markets, proposals and revisions can be managed consistently.
Tango Media Systems provides that type of environment for local television advertising.
How TangoRESPONSE Replaces Spreadsheet-Dependent Processes
Tango helps sales teams: Instead of searching through attachments to determine which spreadsheet is current, the team can work from a more organized campaign record.
Manage the Change
The most difficult part of eliminating spreadsheets is often not selecting technology. It is documenting the existing process and deciding how work should be handled going forward.
Tango Media Systems can help media companies evaluate their current proposal workflow, identify unnecessary manual steps and configure a more repeatable process using TangoRESPONSE.
Centriply’s managed-service team can also handle campaign planning and coordination for advertisers and agencies that want the benefits of the technology without adding another internal platform.
Better Workflow Produces Better Selling
Salespeople can spend their time developing advertiser solutions, not locating files, correcting formulas and reconciling conflicting versions.
A structured proposal process gives management greater visibility, gives sellers more confidence in the information and gives advertisers a more professional buying experience.
Spreadsheet elimination is not primarily an IT initiative. It is a revenue initiative that helps local television move at the speed advertisers now expect.
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