UARTERLY
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2013
CONNECTING EMPLOYEES COMPANY-WIDE
AS WE PREPARE FOR THE 2ND QTR PUSH we have made many strides toward our annual commitments to Hearst.
commitments to our Customer Care and Service. We will be measuring performance and quality in all units to determine how we setup for our future.
FIRST, I am very excited about our continued revenue expansion in the multi-tiered plan: Print, LocalEdge Digital, Hearst Newspapers Digital, and Non-Hearst Digital Partners. Our future continues to look very bright due to Digital expansion. We have many colleagues in our sales-force selling New Digital every single week.
THIRD, is our commitment to training our team members on our products and services. All Management Teams are setting, or will setup, training sessions for all staff to make sure everyone is aware of our new product lines and changes to existing product lines. Our future depends on our sales-force hitting the New sales targets that we have outlined to best support all Sales Channels. It is with deep commitment from a corporate level that we retain the business that we sell and we treat
SECOND, we continue to hire in our Digital areas and our staffing contin ues to grow. It’s important over the next 3 months that we have strong
our customers with the “White Glove” approach. Our customers are why we are gainfully employed and have the opportunity to engage in all of our communities. FINALLY, I WANT TO THANK ALL OF YOU for the continued support that you have shown to Hearst, LocalEdge, our Customers, our Partners, and to the leadership team.
KEVIN PAYNE OUR FIRST QUARTER PERFORMANCE shows our sales group offering larger programs to a more diverse customer base. Through sales updates internally and with Hearst, we talk a good deal about Average Value Order (AVO). This particular measure of our sales performance is important as it acts as a general reflection on the type of products and level of service a customer receives from our company. So far this year, we’ve seen an increase in our digital AVO. As this is a positive trend, there is still room for improvement continuing into Q2. WE KNOW DIGITAL PRODUCTS WORK optimally when key components are present; tri-screen web design, search
That includes both SEM and SEO, an active social media presence to name a few. Our bundled packages, contests and promotions are developed to support a successful campaign that a customer can build from based on their needs. Acquisition and loyalty, creative and directional, brand identity and brand selection -no matter the type of business and its objectives, we are proving to have the right mix ofproducts to help promote and achieve success. BEYOND BETTER QUALITY PROGRAMS, our 2013 first quarter sales have us improving our overall digital sales from January 1st to March 31st by 35%. A part of this success has
been the wrap up of our 2013 March Madness promotion. With this contest we had our largest month of NEW sales, showing a 40% increase in NEW digital over the previous month! As a result, roughly 140 sales colleagues contributed to the promotion and will be receiving over $40,000 in additional payouts and incentives. CLOSING OUT A MONTH-OVER-MONTH IMPROVEMENT IN Q1, we are striving to continue this momentum. For Q2, we will finish uncovering our target SMB’s 2013 goals and improve the pace towards our top line sales objectives. There are many great incentives for both employees & customers alike. As we work through Spring and anticipate nicer weather, our digital sales will continue to heat up!
THE FOLLOWING COMPRISES The LocalEdge Quarterly Editorial Board. If you have news or photos that you would like to share with colleagues across the company, please submit them to the Editorial Board member representing your workgroup.
President’s Message JEFF FOLCKEMER
Sales
KEVIN PAYNE
A 2013 EMPLOYEE PROFIT SHARING PLAN was rolled out in March to non-sales employees. As every LocalEdge associate has the opportunity to impact our success, Financial Reporting is announcing that we are currently on pace to achieve our profit target. MAIN INITIATIVES that are at the forefront of the Finance Group’s efforts will be furthering our tracking processes and abilities, continually improving reporting and insight into our Company’s perfor-
mance to leadership; as well as driving cash collections and assisting sales in minimizing risk. TO ASSIST US WITH THESE EFFORTS our group has added Joe O’Donnell as Director of Revenue Operations. Joe brings strong leadership from large process-driven organizations. His great experience and overall knowledge of technologies will help us to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the department.
General Operations MIKE WROBLESKI
Finance
NICK KNAB
Human Resources JOHN BRENNAN
Customer Service NICOLE BESANCON
IT General
CARRIE CARVER
Marketing
CHRIS POST
Production & Order Processing LISA CHATHAM
Sales Training
SHAWN CHRISTENSEN
Sales Account Coordination & Support
FROM A GENERAL OPERATIONS STANDPOINT, Q1 finds us continuing to build efficiencies company-wide based on the needs of our customers. The addition of a single-point-of-contact internal DAC / MAC team has helped our Digital and Buffalo sales markets with processing and improved the overall experience of the advertiser. DIGITAL MARKETS have seen the transition of our sales professionals working out of their home offices. We’ve also completed an analysis on key functions of corporate work-groups and will be rolling out “Edgequest”, which is a project that will align resources and utilize best practices to support our continued growth.
the LocalEdge footprint, selling our digital marketing services at 50 (17 Hearst / 33 non-Hearst). In the coming weeks we will be sending out a formal announcement that will highlight our completed contract with The Tampa Tribune with more partnerships being explored.
LAST WEEKS ANNOUNCEMENT ON OUR AGREEMENT WITH TRIBUNE PUBLISHING places the total number of properties
AS THIS BUSINESS CHANNEL CONTINUES to be a high-growth area for the company, excellence in our support to resellers is key to their sales success. Furthermore, their success will be key to our success.
THE PRODUCTION DEPARTMENT is excited to announce the addition of copywriters to the team. The new group will primarily focus on the press release product, but will support our new content development product available to our reseller channel.
WE ARE ALSO IMPLEMENTING A NEW PROCESS for the fulfillment of standard products. Designers will now have ownership over certain accounts from start to finish. This will improve turn-around times and will ultimately result in a better cus-
DORRIE STANDISH
Copyright 2013 Localedge. All rights reserved. Writing, editing, design, coordination and print production by Localege.
[ PRODUCTION CONTINUED.. ] tomer experience ensuring design consistency from product to product. LOCALTRAK & RCF PROVISIONING has been transitioned to the Business Workflow team for all print, digital & Reseller advertising orders. This transition allows for the provisioning of these products prior to processing in order to expedite the start of product fulfillment.
enhancement to input a renewal flag on all renewal orders processed this year. Once the renewal flag is processed, users looking at accounts through Account Inquiry will see the letter R to the left of the book code field on the contract line. Please note that this field will be blank if the contract has not been renewed in 2013.
ADDITIONALLY, this past quarter Processing started using a new DIAD //////
EFFECTIVE 3/31/13, Production combined efforts with the IT fulfillment teams implementing process changes guaranteeing customer purchases
AT THE BEGINNING OF JANUARY our team relocated to our John Muir Drive location in Buffalo, NY. One of the many benefits that we’ve enjoyed as the result of this move is the opportunity to work alongside the Digital Account Coordinators. With this group, we are working optimally to streamline responses to our sales team and customer base. Digital sales representatives are now benefiting from one point of contact for all customer communication.
ONE OF OUR PROUDEST ACCOMPLISHMENTS in Customer Service has been our ability to maintain an A+ Rating with the Better Business Bureau. This is great news to share with our customers and the businesses that we call on. With the first quarter ending, in conjunction with our DAC team, we are very optimistic about a continued strong performance for our department. This positive trend is supported as we’ve experienced a 17% reduction in call volume from the previous year’s
SALES REPRESENTATIVES NOT YET ASSIGNED TO A DAC CAN CONTINUE TO SEEK ASSISTANCE FORM THE SALES SERVICE HOTLINE (SSH) at x80411. WE HAVE RECENTLY EXPANDED THE ASSISTANCE HOURS ON THE SSH PHONE QUEUE TO RUN FROM 8AM THROUGH 5:3PM EST IN ORDER TO BETTER SERVE OUR COLLEAGUES IN TEXAS. FEEL FREE TO GIVE US A CALL, WE ARE HERE TO HELP!
THE MARKETING DEPARTMENT spent Quarter 1 finalizing and rolling out the company’s new campaign. With the help of our newest team member, multi-media designer Michele Lange,
we created an ROI binder featuring customers with excellent results by vertical, the seven-minute edge [elevator speech], a customer leave behind, folders, thank you cards and branded coasters.
upgrading or downgrading existing products begin billing at the time of processing. This change avoids gaps in billing for our customers and ensures quick commission payment for our Sales Team. BOTH GROUPS have modified workflow processes with the help of audit reporting developed by the IT Analyst Group to make certain fulfillment is expedited quickly and appropriate audits are completed ensuring products are functioning as expected.
CARRIE HALLNAN
CARRIE HALLNAN OF CUSTOMER SERVICE CELEBRATES 11 YEARS AT LOCALEDGE!
All employees received a coaster as part of the campaign. WE HAVE INTRODUCED regional sales meetings with leadership teams that discuss upcoming events, trade opportunities sales support, product chang, pricing updates and more. Our heightened communication through thse meetings, contests, newsletters and social media will continue to strive to connect our employees company-wide.
OUR TEAM has been extremely busy so far this year. Here is a quick summary of a few of the changes that we launched in Q1 of 2013.. // NEW CUSTOM SEM REPORTING // NEW FACEBOOK PAGES // FIXED CLICK PAGES THAT FULFILLS ON ONLY GOOGLE/YAHOO // ADDED 15K CITIES IN THE PAM PROPOSAL GENERATOR // INTEGRATED CUSTOM WEBSITE REPORTING INTO DASHBOARD // ADDED 50 NEW DESKTOP/MOBILE THEMES // INTEGRATED SIMPLI.FI DISPLAY REPORTING IN OUR DASHBAORD // DEVELOPED GREAT NEW SALES/BILLING REPORTS
THE DEVELOPMENT TEAM has been going through a major transition over the past few months. In effort to be flexible with the ever-changing environment, we are converting to an agile software development framework. THE DEVELOPERS are working on scrum teams with the product owners and our QA group to break up large projects into smaller work chunks where working code is delivered every two weeks. We are extremely lucky to have such an amazing, highly skilled team working for our company! THE WHOLE TEAM has been working together to get all of the new affiliate resellers live as quickly as possible. We have been creating customer potals, business directory searches, and
OUR SALES SUPPORT AND ACCOUNT COORDINATOR GROUPS continue to change as we keep in step with the needs of our sales groups. As Digital-only markets have transitioned to a work-from-home environment, our Support-to-Rep ratio has greatly improved to better assist sales with paperwork and prep for processing,
internet marketing sites for all of our partners. THE RESELLER ENGAGEMENT TEAM is doing a great job of providing outstanding service to our ever-growing list of partners. Check out some of our latest Internet Marketing Sites that our web team launched for our partners, all built with responsive design. www. customerswhostick.com, www.newsdayconnect.com. THE DIGITAL ANALYST TEAM IS GROWING AGAIN! We welcome all of the new faces on the team. We have recently had a large influx of custom products that the team is working very hard to fulfill. WHAT ARE OUR MAJOR INITIATIVES FOR 2013? >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> // BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE PROJECT We are working on a data warehouse project that we will allow all departments and resellers to easily pull KPIs through an easy to use tool. This information is going to greatly assist our Sales Organization in choosing the best products/packages for specific advertisers/verticals. This will allow the Analyst Team to easily create different views of the data for each audience. // CLOUD PROJECT We are working on a project that will move our entire customer facing data to a private cloud environment at SunGard. This change will provide us with additional stability and redundancy that is necessary as we grow our business. The Admin Team is working
account information and customer support. THE DIGITAL ACCOUNT COORDINATOR GROUP continues to grow to serve the digital only markets. Additionally, a new group of Multi-Media Account Coordinators (MACs) have been created and join us from the previous Retention
closely with the Development Team to fully test and migrate the data over to the Su nGard environment. // SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGEMENT We will be launching a new Custom SMM product. We will also be offering a tool called “Social Leads” that will allow Advertisers to see who is talking about their products/services. // DISPLAY We have been working with a number of different vendors to come up with a display ad marketing plan. We are looking to sell Display Ads, Retartgeting, and Mobile Display. // PAM PROPOSAL GENERATOR We are in the process of making numerous changes to the logic of this tool to align closer to the information provided by Google. Also, we are making this tool work properly on an IPod. // SALES TOOLS We have been researching a number of different tools in the market to provide Sales with a software package that can be used to provide a full digital analysis of their potential advertisers. // SALES WORK AT HOME PLAN The Support Team is going to develop a plan to better support the Sales Reps working from home.
WE WOULD LOVE to hear your suggestions. If you have any new product ideas or product feature requests, please send them over to us.
team. We have now aligned Account Coordinators individually to specific regions company-wide. Our new MAC team will continue to assist with on-boarding print markets, limiting cancellations across the company and support sales through their host of added duties.
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OUR KICKOFF TO 2013 finds us supporting IST classes across our footprint along with ongoing 50/50 trainings. In addition to nurturing the talent of our organization, we are pleased to have added individuals to our group with special skill-sets. WE WELCOME Dan Hanssel and Kiersten Hake over the Great Lakes Region. We are also pleased to have Anthony Evans bring his skills and experience to training over North & South Carolina.
A GREAT TIME TO BE AT LOCALEDGE // As we look around the company it’s easy to see new positions that as short as a few years ago didn’t exist. We also see that while we continue to be very dedicated to customer service there are activities happening in our work surroundings that improve personal fulfillment. THE WEB DESIGN SUITE enjoys an energetic green wall and ergonomically correct exercise balls as chairs.
JOHN LAMB
WEB DESIGNER
At our corporate offices, groups have basketball hoops. Our digital analysts have even laid out a nine-hole putting
We are very excited to have these individuals on board and know they will bring their knowledge, passion and enthusiasm to all our training efforts.
and help us grow our business.
50/50 TRAINING SESSIONS typically range based on our needs across a variety of subjects. Most recently we’ve focused on trainings that help Drive 3 key factors: True News Sales, Average Value of Order & Digital Increase to Advertiser. These are the three key factors that bring our advertisers the best ROI
TIME HAS PROVEN that the more advanced digital campaign a customer has, the happier the customer is with the results and the more likely they are to keep that advertising long term. To keep us heading in the right direction, Q2 will contain additional detailed 50/50’s on how to positively affect these 3 key factors. We are looking forward to a successful and exciting Q2!!!
course where competitive spirit is high during breaks & lunch hours! Softball teams are forming for the summer and groups of conscientious employees are continually supporting community activities. With a number of new initiatives we are thinking employee satisfaction.
creation of our wellness program, Think Wellness. Our employee wellness committee headed up by Operations Analyst, Veronica Hens, is currently working with Blue Cross & Blue Shield to setup company-wide initiatives. This group will soon be rolling out the program over the next couple of weeks.
PROFIT SHARING// Last month the company announced our profit sharing program for non-sales employees. The Profit Sharing plan was developed for non-sales employees to reward their contributions. As our sales team enjoys performance-based incentives - driving top line success and the Reseller Channel continues to grow, we are pacing ahead of our profit goal at this early stage of the year and encourage everyone to stay focused on great customer service and productivity that will help us exceed our profit targets. WELLNESS FOCUS// Human Resources is very pleased to announce the
STAYING UP-TO-DATE// Each of us has many exciting changes in our lives including marriage, new additions to the family and change of address. With these types of changes, please be sure to update your information at MyHearst or by contacting the HR department.
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EMPLOYEES WITH OVER 10 YRS OF SERVICE FOR Q1
25+ YEARS 27 YRS
DENNIS GROMACKI
DIGITAL MEDIA EXECUTIVE
20+ YEARS 24 YRS 22 YRS 22 YRS 22 YRS 21 YRS
THERESA PODLASINSKI DON FOLCKEMER LARRY COHEN CAROLYN TADDEO KELLEY VANSLANDER
CONTRACT ANALYST REGIONAL VICE PRESIDENT DIGITAL MEDIA EXECUTIVE DIVISION MANAGER MARKETING MANAGER
15+ YEARS 19 YRS 19 YRS 18 YRS 18 YRS 18 YRS 18 YRS 18 YRS 16 YRS 16 YRS
JIM BECHT IRMA GARCIA BOBBY JONES CANDY KONCZAKOWSKI BARB BONINI LYNN KNIGHT LAURIE TATOM DORRIE STANDISH VICKIE BASHAM
FACILITIES COORDINATOR SALES SUPPORT MANAGER DIGITAL SALES MANAGER ACCOUNTS PAYABLE CLERK DIGITAL MEDIA CONSULTANT SALES SUPPORT COORDINATOR SR SALES SUPPORT MANAGER CORP SALES OFFICE MANAGER DIGITAL SALES MANAGER
10+ YEARS 15 YRS 15 YRS 15 YRS 14 YRS 14 YRS 13 YRS 12 YRS 12 YRS 12 YRS 11 YRS 11 YRS 11 YRS 11 YRS 10 YRS 10 YRS 10 YRS 10 YRS 10 YRS
DAN KULCZYK KYNN NICASTRO RICH TRABINGER DEBORAH ROGALSKY KIM HUGHES KATHY BRADOSKY MICHELLE MROZEK MELISSA FELLENZ TAMMI PRIESTER TOM MURPHY CARRIE HALLNAN HOLLY EARSING BOB VOELKER DENISE SHEARER PRI BRINGHURST PATRICIA DIER HELEN SAAR KIM GOLISZEK
RESELLER ENGAGEMENT SUPERVISOR PRODUCTION COORDINATOR DIGITAL MEDIA EXECUTIVE COLLECTIONS SPECIALIST DIGITAL MEDIA EXECUTIVE LEAD CREDIT ANALYST OPERATIONS ANALYST PRODUCTION SUPERVISOR SR DIGITAL ANALYST COLLECTIONS SUPERVISOR CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE CAMPAIGN COORDINATOR NETWORK ADMINISTRATION MANAGER PAYROLL MANAGER TRADE ASSISTANT DATE ENTRY CLERK TEAM COLLECTIONS LEADER 3RD PARTY COLLECTIONS CLERK
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