Software helps ITN to sell old news footage

Broadcaster ITN has gone live with a web-based software application to boost sales of its archived TV footage.

The world’s largest independent news organisation found that success in exploiting its back catalogue of audio-visual content was outstripping the capabilities of the IT systems set up to manage the business.

Sue Thexton, managing director of ITN Archive, says growing sales of archived content to media companies such as Reuters, Channel 4, Granada and Fox News, required a more integrated and accurate view of sales and finance activity.

‘ITN Archive needed something that would allow it to manage its customer relationships, which are distributed across the world, much more efficiently,’ she said.

‘Our previous system provided a certain level of productivity for the sales and finance teams, but it wasn’t felt to be sufficiently stable or scalable for our growth expectations.’

Thexton says that before introducing the online software from vendor Salesforce.com, most
information about ITN’s sales and financial performance was produced manually using spreadsheets.

‘The new system delivered a core requirement to integrate sales activity with ITN’s back-end finance system, so we could track a sales opportunity through to invoicing and back into a view of each customer’s overall sales history,’ said Thexton.

Further benefits include a need for minimal intervention by ITN’s own IT department, because the new software is hosted online by the vendor.

Thexton says the new system also better supports strategic growth plans by providing more accurate and up-to-date information, regardless of where in the world staff access it.