Scottish newspaper publishing company Johnston Press has signed an agreement with Google and salesforce.com to transform its advertising sales operations by adopting Google Apps to support a company-wide, cloud-based email system.
The new model is based on salesforce.com’s social enterprise applications for building customer social networks, and Google Apps for Business, which will be used as the core of the company’s new e-mail system.
JP’s non-office-based sales staff will be given iPads to allow them to work remotely to improve their sales effectiveness at customers’ premises, helping the company’s sales executives to communicate, collaborate, and share business information.
The new model uses social media tools to help advertisers and customers reach their desired audience in an enhanced manner across print, iPad, web and mobile.
Salesforce.com’s social enterprise application leverages open, social and mobile cloud technologies to enable Johnston Press to build customer social networks to transform the way they support their customers and interact internally as a team.
It also enables all management and salespeople to access a single view of their customers and see what presence they have across all of the company’s advertising properties, allowing the team to provide their customers with the relevant advertising opportunities across both traditional print and digital media to ensure their advertising spend is optimised to reach audience.
Google Apps is a web-based suite of communication and collaboration products. It includes Gmail with 25 GB of storage per account and integrated Google Talk; Google Calendar; Google Docs and Google Video for Business.
Stored in Google’s cloud, all information can be accessed any time and anywhere, from any Internet-connected device.
