Comcast’s advertising-sales arm, Comcast Spotlight, renewed its licensing agreement with Harris for its traffic and billing software, Harris announced Wednesday.
Under the deal, Comcast Spotlight will use Novar traffic and billing software products in more than 50% of its footprint across five U.S. regions: the Southern division (including Atlanta; Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn.; and Jacksonville, Sarasota and West Palm Beach, Fla.); Western division (including Denver; Albuquerque, N.M.; and Salt Lake City); Eastern division (including Pittsburgh); Midwest division (including Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis and St. Paul, Minn.); and north-central Division (including Boston).
“We chose Novar because it is very capable of supporting and managing our high-volume cable ad-sales operation, which includes multichannel, multisystem and multizone spot buys,” said Steve Feingold, senior vice president of strategic planning for Comcast Spotlight, in a statement. “By streamlining and automating many aspects of the cable ad-sales process, Novar enables our account executives to be more productive, accurate and efficient, while also providing better, faster customer service.”
Comcast Spotlight is also expanding its use of scalable, open-database Novar software products for sales, scheduling, traffic and spot-buy analysis through to billing, including Gatekeeper transaction-management and Remote Office remote-sales and accounting-management software.
And the division is using Gatekeeper eBusiness Order Exchange software, which Harris co-developed with Comcast Spotlight one year ago, to handle the electronic revision of invoicing and sales transactions.
“We’re extremely pleased that Comcast Spotlight has demonstrated this high level of confidence in Novar performance by renewing and expanding our relationship,” added Tim Thorsteinson, president of Harris Broadcast Communications, in a statement. “Harris is fully committed to the cable-television industry, and we’re delighted to serve Comcast’s ongoing traffic-and-billing software needs.”
