CMAssistant, the circulation management solution for alternative newsweeklies
CMAssistant is the tool of choice for circulation managers at alternative newsweeklies and other free-distribution publications around the continent. From British Columbia to Florida, from New York to LA, from Chicago to Houston, they're using CMAssistant or its predecessor, EXTRA!, to get their papers out, to analyze their circulation, to create their audit reports.
What is CMAssistant and what does it do?
CMAssistant is a database application designed specifically to meet the needs of bulk-distribution publications. It was designed originally for alternative newsweeklies, and they continue to be the majority of our users. But CMAssistant is increasingly being used by advertising publications. It tracks the elements of your circulation system - routes, zones, locations, drivers, racks and publications. It prints out master and route sheets and helps you get your papers delivered on time, to the right places and in the right amounts. It tracks your returns and calculates your waste, not just one week at a time, but over the long haul. By remembering the circulation history of every location in your system, CMAssistant is able to provides circulation statistics that are nearly impossible to get if you're using a spreadsheet to deliver your papers now. And best of all, CMAssistant's unique "Smart Adjust" feature actually analyzes the recent history of every location in your system, applying a set of criteria that you control, then recommends whether the drop for that location should go up, down, or stay the same. This makes it possible to see in an instant where hot spots (and cold spots) in your system are, so you can increase circulation (and ad revenues) and decrease waste (and printing costs). CMAssistant has many other features, including support for carrier payments, rack/box maintenance, and much more.
You can see more screenshots of the current version of CMAssistant (5.8) here.
Why buy CMAssistant?
The feedback we've gotten over the years indicates that CMAssistant provides a very good return on investment (ROI).
A well-run circulation department succeeds because of the people who work in it. That's why the first thing CMAssistant does is help circ managers spend less time in front of the computer and more time out of the office, selling, auditing routes, etc. When the circ manager does sit down in front of the computer, CMAssistant helps him or her quickly identify waste and also find areas where circulation could perhaps be increased.
Those benefits translate pretty directly into dollars. Most of our licensees are spending many thousands - in some cases, tens of thousands - of dollars a week in printing costs alone. If a paper spends $10,000 a week on printing, and CMAssistant identifies even 1% of waste that was being missed previously, that's a savings of roughly $5000 a year (considerably less than the total cost of CMAssistant). And if CMAssistant helps you pinpoint where you can increase circulation by just 1%, you can increase revenue. If CMAssistant helps you reduce waste and increase circulation, well, the cost of the software may be recouped long before it's been in use for a single year.
Finally, keep in mind CMAssistant's rich, hybrid background. CMAssistant has been developed with input from the most successful publications in the buiness - and it's actively in development right now, responding to continuing feedback from our users. We think it's quite possible that CMAssistant may help you answer questions about your circulation system that you never thought to ask.
History
CMAssistant's predecessor, EXTRA!, was first developed in 1999 in close cooperation with several New Times publications, especially the Houston Press and the Dallas Observer. In 2000, it was adopted at all the New Times papers. Since then CMAssistant has been improved greatly by input from other publications such as the Village Voice, the Sacramento News & Review, Las Vegas Weekly, the Pique Newsweekly, the Colorado Springs Independent, and many, many others.
page modified April 20, 2007