Publisher Maximizes Business Intelligence Solution to Launch Direct Marketing Service

Stonebridge was selected by a major regional newspaper publisher to help design and develop the technical architecture and enterprise infrastructure required for an innovative new marketing service.

Newspaper publishers generate revenue by selling advertising space and selling papers. While each of these business lines is a distinct function, both share a common characteristic: they create enormous amounts of potentially valuable data. Our client’s vision was to harness this information and use it to create a whole new business line based on one-to-one direct marketing campaigns for its advertising customers.

Stonebridge proposed a multi-track, integrated approach that would not only support our client’s new direct-mail advertising service but also support its traditional subscription sales and print advertising business lines. The essence of our solution was an enterprise data warehouse that supported all three revenue streams. We used function-specific data from the warehouse to create multidimensional databases built on Cognos PowerPlay business intelligence software. Users access the data via Cognos Upfront Web portal. We designed the portal to mirror the look and feel of the client’s exiting corporate intranet. We also architected and implemented the supporting enterprise infrastructure based on Sun and Oracle technologies.

All three user groups benefited from the Stonebridge solution. For the client’s direct marketing team, users can perform precise segmentation and predictive modeling. For the circulation and print advertising groups, users can create Web reports and track market trends and key performance indicators (KPI) through user-defined “KPI dashboards.”