A good Relationals-ship with Hearst

In quite a shrewd coup, Relationals representatives yesterday announced the decision of media biggie the Hearst Corporation to use Relationals on-demand CRM platform in streamlining their sales department across their twelve-newspaper network, including the San Francisco Chronicle and the Houston Chronicle. “Relationals was the best fit for our strategy of deploying sales technology that will improve customer experiences, raise sales productivity and profitably expand top line revenue growth," said Hearst Newspapers senior vice president Mark Adkins.

Relationals chief executive officer Pankaj Malviya opined that "Relationals provides the easiest to use and most powerful CRM system available for the media industry.” Hearst is about to find out if this is so, and Relationals is doubtlessly primed to received a good deal of free publicity should everything work out in the partnership. The Hearst Corporation is one of the America’s oldest and, by company publicity’s reckoning, largest diversified communications companies.

Hearst now claims some 175-plus magazines, including Cosmopolitan and O; twelve daily American newspapers; twenty-eight television stations through which reach a combined eighteen percent of U.S. viewers; and partial ownership in numerous cable networks, including A&E, ESPN, The History Channel and Lifetime. Hearst also has interests in various business publishing outlets, internet businesses, television production, newspaper features distribution and real estate.

On-demand enterprise applications provider Relationals hosts a platform for creating scalable applications for media industry business. Relationals clientele include newspapers from Scripps, Knight-Ridder, McClatchy, Morris, Lee Enterprises, Cox and Gannett.