The Financial Times scoops the competition in the digital age

With its iconic salmon-colored paper, the Financial Times has been a leading provider of business news, commentary, and analysis for almost 125 years. In recent years, the FT has reshaped and adapted to the rapidly changing environment for news media. By embracing a channel-neutral strategy, the publication has ensured its authoritative, award-winning, and independent journalism is available to readers anytime, anywhere, and on whichever device its increasingly mobile audience might choose. Digital subscribers now exceed global print circulation among its daily global audience of 2.1+ million.

To underpin these changes, alignment of the entire Financial Times team to suit the new business landscape was crucial. Salesforce is used by many of the organization’s employees, including ad sales teams, journalists, and back office personnel. “The ability to consolidate onto one platform has had a big impact for us. It’s more cost-effective to maintain and support, and users only have to log into one place,” says Christina Scott, CIO.

With a common view of customer information, teams across the company are able to attract and retain advertisers and subscribers. Advertiser contact information and sales activities are tracked in Sales Cloud. The company also uses Sales Cloud to manage subscriber data, and is moving its billing system—for both businesses and consumers—into Salesforce for complete and detailed views.

As a subscription business, Financial Times knows that customer acquisition is just the beginning. More than 100 agents in call centers across the globe use Service Cloud to track issues and resolve them quickly. “From a service or subscription point of view, managing our customers on a single platform is critical to survival,” adds Scott.

The Financial Times has also moved many of its systems from legacy platforms into Salesforce, including contracts, directories, IT help desk, and order management. The Customer 360 Platform even powers the website for the company’s popular consumer luxury lifestyle magazine, How to Spend It.

The Financial Times uses social media channels including Facebook and Twitter to share breaking stories, cultivate online communities, and create deeper engagement with readers. The company also uses Marketing Cloud to monitor and engage with social customers. “Marketing Cloud lets us use social media to see how we’re doing,” says Scott. “Social media is the fastest growing traffic source to FT.com, increasing by 20 percent in the first six months of 2012, and is an increasingly important driver of new customers.”