About Blackwell Publishing

Blackwell Publishing is the world's leading society publisher, partnering with more than 600 academic and professional societies to publish over 750 journals and 600 text and reference books annually, across a wide range of academic, medical, and professional subjects.

Project Summary

PCA designed and developed an MS Access Database Application Solution for the telemarketing sales force to track Professors, Universities, Textbooks and follow-ups to support direct telemarketing campaigns. PCA worked with Blackwell to design the new system from scratch.

Business Need

Blackwell's sales relies primarily on an in-house telemarketing group to match professors' ongoing Journal and Textbook needs with production and inventory.   In addition, Blackwell receives new sales leads from direct mail, and sales order cards filled out at publishing trade conferences.    Because it is quite common for professors to move from one university to another, teach alternating classes, and change textbooks, and vary purchasing requests on a semester and annual basis, the highly fluid nature of the ordering process combined with separate disconnected sales sources made it very difficult for Blackwell to effectively track its sales leads.  Common sales problems included duplicate sales orders, and erroneous sales orders from overlapping data sources.

PCA Solution

PCA designed and developed an MS Access Database solution to support Blackwell's telemarketing sales process.  The solution provided complete mail and telephone campaign budget management and allowed the telemarketing staff to effectively track tasks and follow-ups during telemarketing campaigns.   PCA developed specific functions to flag and remove duplicate and erroneous sales orders.  In addition, the simplicity of the solution's User Interface allowed Blackwell to hire temp sales associates on an as-needed basis, and required 20 minutes of training.  PCA's solution resulted in more accurate and predictable sales that could be accomplished in less time with lower-cost sales resources.