Your Ultimate Checklist: Key Considerations for Choosing an OMS

Be sure your OMS checks all the boxes—and delivers 100%

IO delivery, complex billing, double-booking—media sales have a unique set of challenges. Spreadsheets, manual processes, siloed tech, and missing data further exacerbate the challenges and hinder decision-making and media plan development.

How, then, can you optimize visibility efficiency—and profitability? An Order Management Solution (OMS) built for media sales can help you better manage, maximize, and scale omnichannel ad revenue profitability; more specifically, an end-to-end, real-time OMS. But what should you look for when sourcing an OMS for media sales?

OMS for Media Sales: Keys to Success

The following checklist outlines the crucial features that help ensure success in any omnichannel environment.

1. Seamless integration with other systems. Pre-built integrations to existing systems and platforms are a “must” to help ensure uninterrupted workflow. The OMS should easily integrate with your in-house ad servers, such as GAM, FreeWheel, Megaphone, and Adswizz, as well as popular ERPs for invoice generation, such as Oracle NetSuite, Oracle Fusion, Sage Intacct, and QuickBooks. It should also easily integrate with Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.‍

2. Scalable and flexible. The OMS should support all your inventory—whether sponsorship, non-trafficked, or ad-served—and grow with you, facilitating the addition of products and increased volumes or multiple billing types. Flexible inventory and smart-product architecture help eliminate product catalog bloat and inaccuracies that limit true pipeline visibility.‍

3. Greater visibility. For better plan optimizations and profitability, visibility across a complex mix of products and combinations is essential.

4. Support complex billing needs. The OMS must enable the scheduling of invoices, pre-billing, and billing against first-party and third-party delivery stats, as well as complex invoicing terms such as non-standard billing terms.‍

5. Rate card management. Dynamic rate cards are also key to helping maximize revenue so sellers don’t leave money on the table.‍

6. 100% delivery. The OMS should offer comprehensive order tracking and fulfillment features, including real-time visibility into order status, automated workflows for order approvals, inventory management, and proactive delivery pacing, with exceptional insertion order (IO) delivery completion rates. The OMS should also sync opportunities, products, IOs, accounts, and contacts automatically, regardless of your CRM.‍

7. Easy onboarding. The OMS should be user-friendly and easy to implement. It should have an intuitive interface, require minimal training for your team, and offer smooth onboarding to minimize disruption and accelerate time-to-value.‍

8. Powerful data analytics and reporting capabilities. A robust OMS should let you track key metrics such as billing and margins, generate performance reports, and gain insights into sales, customer behavior, ad performance, and revenue. Leveraging inventory data can boost revenue across channels, including dynamic approval rules, oversold inventory checks, campaign pacing alerts, and actual vs. rate card price comparisons.‍

9. On-demand assistance. Your OMS provider must have a proven track record of serving media companies. They must be responsive and proactive and offer reliable technical support and regular software updates.

With the above checklist in hand, what’s your next step? Partner with a trusted provider like Boostr, a leader in Order Management Systems, Ad Ops, and Customer Relationship Management solutions for media. Boostr unifies the latest sales, ad ops, and finance data in one central hub, so you can create pricing, packaging, and product strategies that grow profits.

Boostr’s Order Management System offers out-of-the-box integration for end-to-end OMS—delivering media plans at the right price and margin, launched and billed on time. 

See how Katz Digital is Leveraging Boostr’s OMS

Case in point: Katz Digital—the digital arm of Katz Radio Group, the nation’s largest one-stop media partner for radio advertising—suffered from disjointed, legacy workflows that were slow to deliver analytics and poorly segmented, resulting in lost opportunities. Boostr unified its data, providing real-time insights and saving the Sales team 40% of its time. With customizations, integrations, and automation in place, they’re catching errors much faster. The system sends alerts immediately when campaigns fail to go live as planned or underperform. See full case study here.

Says President Scott Porretti, “Boostr has helped us all become more accountable and responsible, which has driven better performance and makes the advertiser happy, so they want to spend more money with us.” Sales teams are benefitting from insights that drive their strategies, free up their time, and help leadership recognize and reward their performance. “I’m a big fan of Boostr. It’s one of the top five tools we’ve ever added to the business, and I’m excited to see how we are going to grow together.”

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To date, multiple media agencies and publishers have transformed their ad sales with Boostr. Learn how Boostr can help increase efficiency and profitability for your business.