Case Studies
Circulation Classification & Audit Statement - Time Customer Service Inc.
TCS magazine clients choose to become members of the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) or Business Publications Audit (BPA) and abide by their rules and reporting requirements.
One of the requirements is the semi-annual publisher’s statement which reports the magazine’s circulation to the advertising community. All circulation figures reported in the publisher’s statement are audited in detail by ABC/BPA. One of the requirements in reporting circulation is to breakdown circulation into categories such as sponsored, verified, analyzed non-paid, combination sales, etc and report them issue by issue over a period of 6 months. The existing practice required several manual steps by the circulation staff and thus was time consuming and caused delays thus resulting in statement filing extensions.
Qualification - Time Customer Service Inc.
TCS magazine clients needed a way to efficiently target demographic magazine content to select subscribers without expensive programming cost and time for each effort. Its clients required a tool which would allow them to control who receives targeting advertising and editorial content within each magazine, and issue.
Delivery Point Validation – Time Customer Service Inc.
According to the United States Postal Service (USPS), $1.5 billion in postal cost are attributed annually to undeliverable as addressed (UAA) mail due to poor customer data. Approximately 5.4 billion pieces of mail are undeliverable representing 3% of mail volume.
Prior to 2007, the USPS allowed mailers to assign a ZIP4 and take an automated postal discount if an address was valid within a range of addresses. In an effort to reduce postal costs and UAA mail, starting in September 2007 the USPS required that mailers such as TCS validate each and every individual address to determine if the addresses existed. If the primary address could not be verified, the ZIP4 could not be assigned and the postal discount can not be taken.
TCS needed enhancements to their internal system to validate every delivery address and correctly apply postal discounts.
Dynamic Mainframe Job Scheduling – Time Customer Service Inc.
Prior to 1997, TCS magazine clients had to adhere the traditional mainframe scheduling tools which required job and processes to be scheduled on predetermined days and times. Since the magazine industry is extremely fluid which requires TCS’s clients to react quickly to marketing initiatives or news worthy events, this hard schedule of dates and times limited their ability to promptly react to market conditions.
TCS needed a system which allowed for seamless one time or permanent schedule changes that could be initiated by the end-user.
USPS Flat Sequencing System– Time Customer Service Inc.
TCS needed enhancements to their internal presort systems to identify mail pieces that were destined for an FSS machine, perform an FSS presort and accurately calculate postage. And, since Time inc. could realize as much $40k a week in postage savings, they wanted the project installed by August 1, 2011.