For many media companies, the challenge isn’t finding new advertisers — it’s managing everything that happens after the sale. Customer information often lives in multiple systems, departments rely on different workflows, and teams spend valuable time chasing paperwork instead of serving clients.
Workbooks CRM has helped address for a wide range of publishing organizations, including APL Media, publisher of National Geographic Traveller magazine, and who provide commercial features for leading brands such as The Guardian, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph and London Standard.
At APL Media, sales could process orders, but production, finance and marketing operated largely independently, limiting visibility across the organization and creating unnecessary manual work. The company knew it needed more than a customer relationship management (CRM) system. It needed a way to connect every stage of the customer journey while giving employees a complete view of each account.
The solution was Workbooks CRM.
When disconnected systems slow everyone down
Before implementing Workbooks, APL Media’s existing CRM handled basic order processing, but it couldn’t support the broader needs of the business. “We still had to print off orders when they were received and get those manually processed in other departments,” said Matt Midworth, Commercial Director at APL Media. “Another issue was that it wasn’t easy to get good data out of the system in terms of reporting because it was very much just a simple database.”
Like many publishers, APL Media wanted to eliminate duplicate work while improving collaboration between departments. “We wanted to integrate all areas of the business in order to future proof,” Midworth said. “Email marketing was an example of that, where we wanted to be able to have a dialogue with our clients by being able to use our database more effectively.”
Beyond functionality, the company wanted a CRM platform flexible enough to adapt to its publishing workflows while remaining affordable and supported by people who understood its business. “We wanted someone small enough that we could tailor our own version of it, but big enough that we weren’t reinventing the wheel the whole time,” Midworth explained.
Finding opportunities before implementation
Rather than immediately deploying new software, Workbooks began by working with APL Media to map existing processes and identify opportunities for improvement.
The exercise uncovered an unexpected expense. “One of the things that came out of the workshop was that we were spending around £18,000 a year just printing out orders, which was definitely an eye-opener for us,” Midworth said.
The planning sessions also helped the company create a broader operational strategy before any software was installed. “Even before we’d invested in any software, Workbooks had helped us develop a clear strategy that was not only aligned to our goals as a business, but also gave us a detailed plan for carrying it out,” he said. “The workshop really was representative of the attention to detail that Workbooks paid to us throughout the whole process.”
Creating a complete customer view
Once implemented, Workbooks gave APL Media something it had never had before: a single place where sales, production and customer information could come together. “Workbooks is valuable to us, both in terms of the growth in the database and in terms of its management,” Midworth said. “It generates response, which generates revenue.”
Equally important, every member of the sales team could now see the complete history of each customer relationship. “The value that the sales team get from Workbooks is being able to see all of the information in one place, as well as being able to see their colleagues’ information,” he said.
That visibility improved internal collaboration while helping sales representatives spend more time with advertisers. “Having the right information in Workbooks is key because it means our sales team can be more efficient with their time — and in publishing, time is of the essence.”
Removing friction from the sales process
The benefits extended well beyond customer records. By replacing paper-based processes with digital workflows, APL Media reduced costs while accelerating the sales cycle. “As soon as we began processing all of our orders through Workbooks instead of printing them out, we cut costs immediately just by removing paper from the process,” Midworth said. “This means that as soon as we get a new lead, we can see everything right through to the moment we send the invoice.”
Digital signatures also shortened turnaround times. “For our sales team, this means when they get an order, the customer can sign it digitally, which cuts down the time it takes to get an order signed and lets them move onto another booking more quickly,” he said.
The improvements weren’t limited to sales. Production teams also benefited from having immediate access to complete customer information without relying on follow-up emails or phone calls. “In terms of understanding what our customers have ordered, our production team can see everything that they then need to deliver because all the information that the customer has given us is on the order record,” Midworth explained. “This frees up the production team’s time so that they can focus on delivery, but it also frees up more of the sales team’s time because they don’t have to waste time relaying what they’ve sold to production.”
Better data leads to better decisions
For APL Media, one of the biggest long-term benefits has been improved confidence in the quality of its customer data. “Being able to have the right data quality is so important, but maintaining that quality is really important as well,” Midworth said. “Having the right information in Workbooks means our sales team can be more efficient with their time.”
The company can also better manage customer preferences, including maintaining accurate “Do Not Call” lists and ensuring communications are both timely and appropriate.
For publishers navigating increasingly complex advertising operations, APL Media’s experience demonstrates that CRM is about far more than managing contacts. When customer information is unified across sales, production and finance, teams communicate more effectively, manual processes disappear and leaders gain the visibility needed to make smarter business decisions.
In today’s competitive media environment, having a true 360-degree view of every customer isn’t simply a technology upgrade — it can become a competitive advantage.
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