Exterion Media

Exterion Media is a leading Out-of-Home media owner in the UK, providing the opportunity for advertisers to reach and enjoy extended levels of engagement with the UK’s urban audiences. Their sites in and around London’s key transport networks and retail environments ensure that they provide advertisers with access to the UK’s largest and wealthiest urban area.

Presence on Bus and National Rail also provides its clients with an unparalleled scope across regional urban areas. With a vision to be number one in engaging urban audiences across the UK, Exterion Media is shaping the future of the market by delivering quality insights, providing operational excellence and building meaningful relationships across all aspects of business.

Situation

Exterion Media has recently replaced an existing legacy ERP system with Microsoft Dynamics AX, suitably customised for their business processes and installed in a managed data centre. Exterion also uses cloud-based Salesforce as their CRM system. A seamless and efficient means to integrate these two systems was required to speed up operations and avoid the need for double keying of data.

For example, potential new clients created in Salesforce should be passed to AX for credit checking and approval, before Salesforce should accept orders from them. AX should provide integrated product lookups and price calculations for Salesforce, while AX manages stock levels.

Solution

Having completed a number of projects together since 2014, Exterion Media contacted Ballard Chalmers for the design and development of an integration between Salesforce and Dynamics AX using Microsoft BizTalk Server. Dynamics AX would manage product, price, inventory and discount information. Salesforce would process clients, opportunities and quotes. A BizTalk Server solution would manage all data interchanges between the two systems

The custom solution delivered by Ballard Chalmers has enabled Exterion Media to:

• Automate the process of approving new customers created in Salesforce
• Enable Salesforce to lookup products, product packs and prices in AX in real-time
• Enable AX to manage the fulfilment of orders submitted from Salesforce.

Support: The support hours began on go-live of the system with hours purchased on account and called off as they are used. The support is flexible and uncomplicated, being used for fixes, as well as updates, routine maintenance and system health checks.

Outcome

Ian Powis, Exterion IT Director, said, “We’ve used Ballard Chalmers for integration using BizTalk in a number of applications now. They are refreshingly straightforward and practical and we are very pleased with the work they have done for us.”

Geoff Ballard, Ballard Chalmers CTO said, “With this BizTalk implementation Exterion Media now maximises operational efficiency and revenue potential by enabling full integration between its Salesforce CRM system and its Dynamics AX ERP system.”

He continued, “In my experience, the larger the organisation, the more systems are needed and a greater need for integration exists. BizTalk Server solves that need, and we are one of a handful of experts in BizTalk development in the country with more than 15 years experience in delivering successful integration projects.”