Audiovisual Marketing and IoT Converge to Drive Massive Growth for Spectrio

Ranga Bodla, Head of Industry Marketing, NetSuite

January 16, 2018

There’s a lot of thought that goes into audiovisual marketing, the reassuring voice and soft music on hold during a phone call or the video displays in waiting areas of a hotel, auto shop or doctor’s office.

For Spectrio(opens in new tab), a top audiovisual marketing provider in the U.S., a great deal of science, testing, customer service and cutting-edge technology goes into its range of full service offerings. To start, Spectrio’s services team collaborates closely with customers to understand the company, its products and services, and the clientele.

“We’re a content company, we’re a marketing company and we’re also a technology-enabled service company,” said Aaron Kleinhandler, CEO at the 150-person Spectrio outside Tampa, Fla. “Customer experience is what we do.”

Spectrio relies on NetSuite’s integrated suite for virtually every business function, from financials and billing to CRM(opens in new tab), inventory management(opens in new tab), service tickets and tracking audio and visual content. It’s now rolling out NetSuite SuiteCommerce to give customers new ecommerce capabilities(opens in new tab). Spectrio’s content and devices are connected (via the internet) with licensing and contracts controlled by NetSuite, which in turn connects with thousands of devices in the field.

Founded in 2002, Spectrio began as an on-hold messaging service, and now offers digital signage and overhead music for consumer-facing merchants. More than 25,000 companies, including Papa John’s, Whole Foods Market, Jiffy Lube and U.S. Cellular, across 65,000 locations, use Spectrio to enrich the customer experience.

A creative team works with customers to devise optimal solutions, often creating custom voice and video content, and licensing music from third-parties. Spectrio technicians are on call to handle hardware, wiring, installation and software management.

For instance, Spectrio worked with a large tire dealer to create a series of videos explaining the need for vehicle maintenance such as tire rotations and differential checks. Customers in a waiting room may learn a few things and ask the shop for additional inspection and possibly repair, generating revenue.

It’s been a recipe for success at Spectrio, named multiple times to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing companies.

“We’ve been able to attract outside investors and some very large customers to grow from a bootstrap Mom and Pop business to where we are today,” said Kleinhandler. “We’ve acquired 20-some businesses over the years, and just completed an acquisition of 25,000 locations that grew the business by about 40 percent.”

Reaping Rewards as an Early Cloud Adopter

Kleinhandler credits the NetSuite platform, which Spectrio deployed as an early cloud adopter in 2003, for providing the scalability and flexibility the business needed to grow. Spectrio has also realized IT cost savings compared to on-premise systems that it’s channeled into customer service and content creation. In its 15 years on NetSuite, Spectrio’s revenue has soared 30-fold.

“Having a 360-degree view of our customers and operations with NetSuite has allowed us to efficiently grow the business,” Kleinhandler said. “If we didn’t have a system as versatile as NetSuite, I don’t think we’d be able to do that.”

Kleinhandler adds that Spectrio enjoys industry-leading customer retention rates, as well as steadily growing margins. In the future, Spectrio wants to personalize the customer experience even further, understanding the nearby consumer and context.

“That’s because we don’t have to spend money on IT infrastructure or deal with upgrades — we can spend money supporting our customers,” he said. “Not only that, NetSuite supports how we do future development, integrate new services and acquisitions, and build out more tools for customers.”

Learn more about NetSuite for advertising and digital marketing agencies(opens in new tab).

NetSuite has packaged the experience gained from tens of thousands of worldwide deployments over two decades into a set of leading practices that pave a clear path to success and are proven to deliver rapid business value. With NetSuite, you go live in a predictable timeframe — smart, stepped implementations begin with sales and span the entire customer lifecycle, so there's continuity from sales to services to support.