PORTLAND, ORE. — One day last April, our Director of Engineering Chris Weiss asked me to attend an impromptu presentation of some software application used to interface our new Telos VX system. I had been curious to see what this was all about, and what I discovered is something that we had been lacking for years: A centralized database across our nine stations for our winners, calls and contests that is easy to use and packed with functions to save an enormous amount of time and duplicate efforts by our Promotion Team. It was NeoWinners, from a company called NeoGroupe.
Not only can the system adequately serve our giveaways organization — the promotions/on-air/reception desk — but it also links to phones for the on-air talent. Listeners playing too often are now caught before the jocks even pick up the phone, rather than at the reception desk, when it’s uncomfortable to deny a prize because of our rules. We were missing that function previously.
Though installing such a system affects quite a number of people (promotions, on-air teams, technical department, reception, likely more than 30 people), integration went well and extensive training helped us getting started in less than a week.
To give you an example: Scheduling a contest with “week-day qualifiers” and “weekly grand prize trip winners” was done in two minutes when it would have taken me two hours with our previous system.
NeoGroupe also converted and merged our existing separate databases into NeoWinners (showing our previous separate lists had duplicates) and increased our IRS compliance, as winners have now a unique record across all stations.
The final touch was the link with the phones. Hosts said “Wow! This is so cool,” when they saw existing winners calling in to their studios and being immediately recognized.
Even the street team and online/Internet giveaways are managed within the same database. It makes things a lot easier than with several different interfaces.
We are looking at integrating with the NeoGroupe Web/SMS solution.
I recommend NeoWinners to anyone involved with prize and winner management on a daily basis.
For information, contact Philippe Halin at NeoGroupe at (210) 757-4700 or visit www.neogroupe.com.
