Background
Salem Media engaged Indigo Trigger to assess and document current state Lead to Cash workflow — presales, CRM and fulfillment — that take Salem to a new desired end state recommendation.
Salem Media has 4 distinct business units and is undergoing a strategic push to sell in a "One World" state — any seller can easily sell and fulfill any product within the separate business units. Salem does not have a single source of truth on common sales KPIs and a 360° view of the customer due to multiple CRM systems, lack of adoption within CRM systems, and multiple ways of executing a sales process.
Indigo Trigger was tasked with documenting current state processes, gaining leadership agreement on a prioritized end state and developing 2 roadmaps to execute against the new end state. The first roadmap would require no system changes; the second will account for as much automation and efficiency of workflow and revenue production as possible.
Scope of Assessment
The discovery was scoped to all business units — Local/Broadcast, Salem Media Reps, Salem Web Network, Townhall, Eagle Publishing and Salem Church Products. Specifically, the assessment covered:
Review of the current lead to billing workflow of each of the sales and fulfillment teams, covering systems used, processes and reporting.
Identification of common and varying sales and fulfillment processes by team and/or product.
Financial teams' workflows — systematic and manual.
Understanding of the most common pain points for each stakeholder team.
Executive Summary
The discovery confirmed that Salem Media's multiple systems across multiple product lines and/or teams have resulted in no standard sales process with multiple manual handoffs from lead/pipeline management through customer invoicing and performance reporting.
The root cause is well understood — acquisitions of new businesses, products, and/or previous strategic business decisions have paved the way to a varied approach with lack of integration at almost every step in the sales process.
Key Themes — Click to Expand
Integration & Data Flow — Current State
How systems talk (and mostly don't) across the lead-to-cash stack today:
One live integration. Wide Orbit pushes revenue detail into RAB after orders are completed and approved — one-way. (In three markets, DMS orders push from the AdCelerant UI into Wide Orbit, but revenue posts too slowly to be relied upon.)
No single customer record. There is no shared account across RAB, Wide Orbit, CounterPoint/Salesforce, Monday.com, and Asana. Account and campaign data is re-keyed by many people, in different formats.
Pipeline, billing, and delivery are not linked. There is no systematic connection between pipeline, billing, and fulfillment/performance data at the customer level, so tying a contract to what was actually delivered and recognized is a manual exercise.
Revenue is recorded twice. Because selling and delivering units are separate reporting entities, an order sold by one unit and delivered by another is recorded on both sides; the delivering unit re-bills the selling unit through internal vouchers to land revenue with the right entity. This is handled manually.
Challenges & Pain Points
The following business and technical pain points were validated during the discovery sessions and frame the recommendations that follow.
Business Impact
Unreliable Account Data
Duplication of accounts and account owners due to lack of integration with billing systems and standardized process/controls. Leads to high volume of sales channel conflict. No way to look at one business across multiple sellers/teams. Leads to KPI inaccuracy — new business, renewals, upsells.
No Common Sales Process
Workflow and accountability to said workflow varies by sales team and potentially by leader within sales teams (Local/Broadcast specifically). Leads to lack of trust in pipeline accuracy and forecasting. Manual tracking created in addition to CRM data. No sales operations and/or CRM leadership/ownership also identified.
Single-Source-of-Truth Gap
Revenue data differs across RAB, Wide Orbit and Counterpoint, creating reconciliation work and conflicting numbers in leadership reporting. Critically impacts strategic business decisions and speed to market.
Duplicate Data Entry / Manual Handoffs
Due to lack of system integration across the sales process, sellers, coordinators and fulfillment teams are collecting and entering the same information in multiple systems and forms. This manual process allows for high error rates — naming conventions are not the same and there is no way to match up customers across the sales process.
Lack of Transparency
Sales and fulfillment teams are in different systems and don't have full access to systems the others are working in. Moves almost all communication to email, which is also not integrated back into workflow systems. Takes valuable sales and optimization time away from revenue teams. Inventory availability was mentioned as an example of this.
Technical Pain Points
From the Field — Sales Team Scenarios
Additional background: real-world scenarios raised by sellers and managers during the discovery sessions.
Key Findings — Current State
The findings below summarize current state workflow and system integrations. Salem leadership has agreed to leave Salem Church Products and Eagle Publishing out of the mix as the revenue potential for cross-selling is very low.
Only system integration is Wide Orbit pushing revenue detail into RAB after orders are complete and approved.
In 3 markets, DMS orders push from AdCellerant Marketing UI into Wide Orbit, but there are complaints about the revenue taking too long to show up. Not preferred.
Within Local sales of local offerings, process to get in Wide Orbit and Monday.com varies based on if there is sales support or not. No common workflow.
Within SWN/Townhall sales (by SMR or Local) all ordering into SF.com/Counterpoint is done by a limited number of coordinators.
Finance is manually verifying every order and moving money through journal entries between Counterpoint and Wide Orbit for revenue to be recognized correctly.
Finance uploads revenue files from Wide Orbit and Counterpoint into Great Plains to reconcile.
There is no single customer record between RAB, Wide Orbit, SF.com/Counterpoint, Monday.com and Asana. Account and campaign information is rekeyed in multiple systems by numerous people.
No systematic connection between pipeline, billing and fulfillment/performance data at the customer level.
Current State Systems Matrix
Themes for End State (to Validate)
These are directional themes for the leadership discussion — not decisions. They will be tested, prioritized, and turned into the two roadmaps with the subject-matter experts.
A single customer record. One governed account model with rules of engagement, so an advertiser is visible across every seller and team — the foundation for both channel-conflict control and a 360-degree view.
One CRM for pipeline. Consolidate pipeline management onto a single CRM (whether an enhanced RAB or an alternative), so KPIs and forecasting come from one trusted place.
Connected order-to-fulfillment. Let a sold order flow downstream so manual re-keying becomes validation, and consolidate fulfillment workflow rather than running Monday.com and Asana in parallel.
Integrated, live inventory. A single, current view of availability (starting with GAM-served display) so sellers can quote against real inventory.
A billing and reporting layer that reconciles. Whether or not the billing systems consolidate, a data layer that produces one trusted set of revenue and performance numbers — and reduces the intercompany manual work.
Automation and AI where they earn their place. Applied to the manual, repetitive work (report assembly, order capture, activity logging) — and only on systems the teams actually adopt.
Next Steps
Next steps are outlined below that will guide us to desired end-state recommendations for prioritization. In each of these next steps we would validate integration capabilities, the work product to integrate and timing/resource needs.
Discovery readout to leadership team
Level set and validate current state. Outline desired end state by SMEs. Review next steps below.
RAB Capabilities
Meet with Jason and Keith to gain agreement on what RAB can and cannot do covering pipeline and KPI tracking to fulfillment.
- Understand RAB integration capabilities with billing and workflow management systems.
Wide Orbit and Counterpoint
Gather finance and IT experts to meet with vendor teams on integration capabilities between each other, Great Plains (and potential replacements) and RAB (or any other CRM).
- Understand why current account set up structure interferes with Salem utilizing Wide Orbit's payment portal for customers. Define what steps would be needed to correct that with timing.
- Focus on account/customer record standards and automation.
Digital Vendors
Understand where we can build form/fulfillment integration into digital providers' systems, ideally from our CRM (e.g. Vendasta, LocaliQ, AdCellerant, email providers).
Demo Alternative CRM & Fulfillment Options
Showcase potential alternative CRM and workflow capabilities to subject matter experts.
G/L Replacement
Deeper dive with Autumn and Indigo Trigger (Chris Prinos and others) to discuss NetSuite integrations and capabilities.
Design Desired End-State Workflows
For review with SMEs and leadership teams by July 24th.
- Two draft roadmaps with gaps and pain points addressed with integration and/or automation recommendations.
Meeting Index
| Date | Meeting | Link |
|---|---|---|
| 5/28 | Salem Media / Indigo Trigger Kick-off (leadership) | Open in Fathom |
| 6/2 | Brooke Zapata's Zoom — org structure & discovery plan | Open in Fathom |
| 6/4 | Brooke / Bill Long regroup — org history & tech strategy | Open in Fathom |
| 6/5 | Lead-to-Cash Discovery — SME Intro Call | Open in Fathom |
| 6/8 | Brooke / Chris Prinos — strategy & dynamics sync | Open in Fathom |
| 6/9 | SMR — Lead-to-Cash Discovery | Open in Fathom |
| 6/15 | SWN / Town Hall — Lead-to-Cash Discovery | Open in Fathom |
| 6/16 | Eagle Publishing — Lead-to-Cash Discovery | Open in Fathom |
| 6/18 | Salem Church Products — Lead-to-Cash Discovery | Open in Fathom |
| 6/18 | West Team — Lead-to-Cash Discovery | Open in Fathom |
Upcoming Deliverable
Design desired end-state workflows for review by July 24th
Two draft roadmaps with gaps and pain points addressed with integration and/or automation recommendations.
Roadmap 1: no system changes. Roadmap 2: maximum automation and workflow efficiency.
