CRM and clean customer data as

Prerequisite for sales success

As one of the leading German advertising marketers in Germany, Ströer has a large cross-industry
Client base of small, medium and large advertising companies. With the annual growth of the customer base, the demands on the internal organisation increase in order to meet customer needs in the best possible way in the future.

This includes, among other things, the use of a modern central CRM solution based on Salesforce in order to manage the processes around existing and potential customers as efficiently as possible.
A clearing team checks every newly created and changed data record and thus keeps the customer data clean. After all, clean data is the basis for effective sales processes all the way to collection-ready invoicing.

In the financial sector, Ströer was already working with the solutions of Creditreform Köln von Padberg GmbH & Co. KG (Creditreform Cologne for short). Now a further data-driven optimisation was to take place in the upstream sales area.

Use of the beDirect connection for further automation in CRM & sales

To optimise the performance of the clearing team and reduce manual efforts, an integration project was set up together with beDirect. As part of the project, the existing Salesforce CRM was successfully connected to the data world of beDirect and Creditreform. The aim of the project was to use the credit number to introduce a central ID for unique customer identification throughout the entire buyer journey. From new customer acquisition to receivables management, the customer can be identified uniquely and without duplicates for all departments and users.

This means that users can now transfer a large part of the data they require directly from the beDirect database to the Salesforce CRM take over. Due to this connection, manual checking is no longer necessary and data records are automatically released in Salesforce for further processing in a very timely manner.

In addition to the automation of the clearing processes, the use of Potential addresses made available to Ströer via beDirect. This means that Ströer selects from over 5 million addresses according to various characteristics such as size, industry, location, etc., depending on sales requirements. New potential lists. In this way, the sales department regularly receives new address potential. Due to the prior comparison with the inventory data and the integration of the beDirect and Creditreform ID into the Ströer sales system, no new addresses are created. problematic duplicates generated.

From the very beginning, Ströer has Principles of the GDPR have made it their own. In the integration project, GDPR principles such as data economy, data accuracy and data security were naturally considered and taken into account in the project.

With strong partners from the start

Ströer and Creditreform Cologne have already been working together successfully for years in the field of finance and debtor management. When it came to optimising and automating address management for marketing and sales, the obvious conclusion was to approach the already successful data and information partner. In subsequent discussions, it quickly became clear that beDirect, the joint venture between Creditreform and Bertelsmann, with:

approx. 18 million B2B reference data,
a Salesforce app for CRM-integrated address management,
smart data audits and master data management solutions and
an online address shop for B2B addresses from Germany and Austria

brings the required know-how, qualitative data and intelligent, technical solutions to successfully realise the CRM project together with Ströer.

Michael Gau

Vice President Lead Management Local Markets Ströer Media Deutschland GmbH

"Even in the initial phase, we noticed that the beDirect and Creditreform team really wanted to work together! Even for our partly group-typical, rather complex framework conditions, we found solutions together for all challenges that arose in a timely and professional manner. We look forward to further cooperation and also to expanding our collaboration with other helpful tools!"

Project Milestones

Initial clean-up with maximum referencing rate of all active customers and relevant potentials
Enrichment of the dataset with desired firmographic characteristics for marketing and sales plus the credit number for accounts receivable management
Upload option of high-quality address lists if required, including definition of the quality and information standard
Single check of existing addresses, i.e. identify, check and update in your own Salesforce CRM at the push of a button.
System-supported address regeneration without loss of quality and with little time expenditure
Research of individual contacts for identification and verification on the beDirect reference database

In the course of the project, another optimisation approach emerged. Previously, the clearing team had purged potential lists from unqualified and unknown sources when they were entered into the system. This workflow was optimised to the effect that potential lists now come from a trustworthy data source that makes a subsequent quality check unnecessary. By creating a company profile
and central selection profiles in the webshop, all selected potential lists comply with Ströer's quality standards and are free of duplicates to address lists already in use.

We are Ströer

Ströer is a leading German outdoor advertiser and offers advertising customers individualised, fully integrated complete solutions along the entire marketing and sales value chain. With its "OOH plus" strategy, Ströer relies on the strengths of the OOH business, supported by the flanking business segments Digital & Dialog Media and DaaS & E-Commerce. With this combination, the company is in a position to continuously expand its relevance with customers and, thanks to strong market shares and long-term contracts in the German market, has an excellent prerequisite for being able to benefit disproportionately from market growth in the coming years.

The Ströer Group markets and operates several thousand websites, primarily in German-speaking countries, and operates around 300,000 advertising media in the "Out-of-Home" segment.

The portfolio here includes all media that are used out-of-home - from classic poster media to exclusive advertising rights at railway stations to digital out-of-home media. Currently, around 6,000 digital premium screens are marketed indoors and outdoors at transport hubs such as railway stations, streets, shopping centres and underground and suburban railway platforms. In addition, Ströer provides around 70,000 small-format advertising spaces from the long-tail and POS environment. This makes Ströer by far the largest provider of digital outdoor advertising in Germany, both in terms of reach and revenue.

The company employs around 10,000 people at around 100 locations. In the 2020 financial year, Ströer generated revenue of EUR 1.44 billion. Ströer SE & Co. KGaA is listed on the MDAX of Deutsche Börse.

Do you like the way we work and implement customer solutions?

Would you like to know what solution we have for your challenge? Feel free to contact me!

Salutation

First name

Last name

Company

E-mail

Phone

Website

your message

By submitting the form, I consent to my details being stored for the purpose of contacting me. I can revoke my consent at any time for the future. Your data protection is close to our hearts. Our regulations.

André Schmidt

head of direct sales

My team and I advise you on all aspects of the topic Data Management. This ranges from optimal configured Standard via customised until complete newly developed Solutions.