How Can Your PR Firm Escape from Excel?
Using Microsoft Excel to solve business problems usually seems like a good idea at the time. Most people already have it, it’s accessible enough, and it has a ton of functionality. But once you’ve started using locally stored spreadsheets to house data, it can be hard to stop. Soon, years have gone by, and you’re still using the same Excel spreadsheet you started four years ago, only now it’s crammed to the gills with all sorts of data points. Not only that, but it’s also slow, difficult to navigate, and above all, frustratingly manual. How can you get your company out of Excel’s clutches?
According to a post on PubClub.org titled “Is Excel Still Running Your Business?”, public relations firms face an especially difficult challenge when it comes to organizing their data in manually organized spreadsheets. The example given in this post illustrates a tough potential problem for a PR firm. A firm with 50 different accounts could have a separate spreadsheet for each account – that’s 50 spreadsheets! At this point, if a regularly contacted reporter changes outlets, each and every one of those 50 spreadsheets must be changed to reflect that reporter’s new outlet.
At many firms, those updates will never happen, because people don’t like having to input data manually. I know I don’t. In the aftermath of one outlet change, account executives can face a wholly “unnecessary amount of time qualifying media lists and…[pitching] reporters on outdated information,” hurting a PR firm’s brand image.
As the post goes on to say, however, there’s a better way: a public relations CRM can serve as “one central location for all media relationships to live.” And the best CRM option on the market for PR firms is Bullhorn. With Bullhorn PR CRM, any single update on a reporter’s information will immediately be reflected across your entire organization’s data. And our CRM’s Pulse customer intelligence can tell you who on your staff has the best relationships with key outlets and reporters, helping you to make the most of your media team’s value. With a relationship management platform like Bullhorn PR CRM, your firm can eliminate tedious Excel spreadsheets for good.
