Publication and response handling software
SPG Media
SPG Media is an international business-to-business media company providing controlled circulation magazines, reference websites and business conferences and summits for top company executives and senior management.
The group is UK-based with offices in London, Nottingham and Hyderabad (India), employing more than 350 people and quoted on the London Stock Exchange (AIM).
SPG publish and distribute magazines across 13 industries, including healthcare, packaging, energy, transportation and architecture. In addition, SPG operate 33 internet reference sites, which in 2005 attracted 26 million unique users and provided their customers with more than 40,000 qualified business enquiries.
Octavia had successfully implemented a number of software solutions for subsidiary companies of SPG and were chosen as a partner for the development of SPG's core "Atlas" software.
The requirements
SPG envisioned Atlas as their primary, group level, marketing and publication management tool. The high level requirements of the system were
| Area | Requirements |
|---|---|
| Management of publications and circulation lists | Complete management of SPG's print and web based publications. Creation of circulation lists based on marketing and advertising data |
| PAF | Creation of postcode lookup facilities both for data entry and data processing |
| Integration with SOP system | Integration with SPG's existing back office Sales Order Processing system |
| Web based response handling | SPG were previously using paper based response handling for reader advertiser enquiries. Atlas moved this to a web based model, allowing readers to enquire about the services of individual advertisers through a secure web portal |
| Self service record updating | The development of a secure method for existing marketing contacts (subscribers, readers, etc) to update their own details |
| Cross site usage | SPG have 3 sites (2 in the UK and one in India). All sites need real time read/write access to the data in the system. |
| Extensible access from web applications | SPG run a number of different industry reference web sites. SPG run a web development team who require extensible access into the data and functionality of Atlas |
The solution
We worked closely with SPG to design a solution built around Microsoft's SQL Server and .NET technologies. The solution had a Win32 interface for primary marketing and publication functions with ASP.NET interfaces for the external facing web applications (for response handling and Self service record updating)
Postcode functionality was created by directly licensing the PAF data from Royal Mail and creating a set of wrapper objects for access to this data.
A .NET web service was created to allow integration into the system by the SPG web developers for the industry reference sites.
Usage across SPG's multiple sites was achieved by exploiting the merge replication capabilities of MS SQL Server. Each site runs it's own version of Atlas and the data is continually synchronised.
