XchangeIT reports to newsagents

XchangeIT yesterday sent out this report on the last year to newsagents:

Dear Newsagent,

Each year we provide a review of XIT’s deliverables to the Newsagent Industry. FY 2017 has been a fascinating and rewarding one for us, and it seems also for you.  Here are the highlights.

Support for Newsagents

We continued to provide support for over 2,200 newsagents throughout Australia.  The top two support categories in terms of volume of calls predictably related to our core business of EDI and High Quality data. Over 86% of newsagents consistently provided high quality data by passing their ITCs.  Well done.  In 2017 we began increasing newsagent’s active participation in the Variance measurement to position them better to qualify for No Physical Returns (NPR).

XIT’s strong support of the promotion efforts on the part of News Corp, Gotch and Bauer were the next highest support call categories.

It was gratifying to see that the fifth highest call volume category was for non-XIT matters, such as Windows 10 and anti-virus issues. We were willing to assist hundreds of newsagents with problems they were having with non-XIT technology or service, which would have cost them more money had they hired an IT consultant to fix them.

Value for money

XIT still provides superior value for money for newsagents, especially those on the highly discounted rate (most newsagents). Our latest ROI shows a return of 482% for newsagents who save three hours a week using XIT.  This percentage excludes any ROI from the Reconciliation or NPR programs, or the uplifts from the various Promotion programs run through XIT.

Value add

In addition to the very attractive ROI newsagents receive from the XchangeIT core business, we got a lot of pleasure adding value with our other programs. These were:

Reconciliation – enabling you to quickly and accurately reconcile your Returns claims with Gotch’s accounts each month, or to easily identify where there might be a gap between your claim and the Returns accepted by Gotch.

No Physical Returns – enabling you to save time and hard cash by qualifying to send no mags back to Gotch each month. Early indicators show 54.54% of agents are saving up to $40 p.w. ($2,080 p.a.).

Promotions – we facilitated promotions for News Corp, Gotch and Bauer.  Results varied yet our Promotions Reports showed an uplift of between 5% & 12% in many newsagents, for very little or no cash outlay.

Digital Marketing pilot – Over an 18-month period of research, design and development we produced a very successful Proof of Concept and Minimum Viable Product culminating in a successful deployment by December 2016.  We proved it possible to integrate any newsagent’s store with a viable on-line presence and then perform general and local promotions efficiently.  This knowledge and skill set will help us in our FY 2018 projects.

Subscriptions – we ran a successful project for News Corp to show we can extract subscription data from newsagent data, with permission, while keeping subscriber details private (required by newsagents) – truly an all-win outcome.

Going the extra mile

Network-Gotch cutover – we identified, rescued and then correctly transitioned those newsagents whose data got lost, misplaced, miscategorised, mislabelled, or generally missed.  This continued behind the scenes for months after the official cutover date saving agents money in “lost” Returns claims, while providing distributors with errant sales data, preserving data integrity and low fees for those stores affected.

Sponsorship – we continued direct sponsorship of newsagents via our popular Gift Card program.  Each month we deliver a gift card to at least ten newsagents to reward them for sustained good performance.

POS Supplier and Distributor related issues – XIT often discovered issues with POS or Distributor systems even before they did.  We aimed to solve them quickly, efficiently and behind the scenes.  A good issue resolution is when the distributor or POS supplier is informed by us they had a problem and “here’s how we solved it”.

Research and Development (R&D) – we spend a significant amount of money each year on R&D with the aim of improving XIT deliverables to newsagents.  Sometimes it makes it to market (e.g. Reconciliation) and sometimes it fails, to be put on the “let’s try again next year” pile.  This positions newsagents to receive the best technology XIT can deliver, with the associated benefits.

Thank you

The Team at XchangeIT comes to work every day looking for ways to produce All-Win experiences for our stakeholders. One day we might be perfect, until then we’ll try our very best, because as newsagents and distributors, you are our customers and we are grateful for your business.  So this is A BIG THANK YOU for being part of our lives.

Warm regards,

The XchangeIT Team.