West Australian Newspapers has added its 23 regional titles to the centralised CCI advertising platform it set up in 2010.

The West Australian, Kalgoorlie Miner and Countryman were already running on the common CCI AdDesk system in Perth.

Now the 23 regional titles produced at the same number of locations – spanning an area of about 2.6 million square kilometres – have been added, delivering extra flexibility and cost-reduction in both hardware and services.

Regional publications general manager Ian Jones says experience with the existing system helped drive the decision: “Implementing the 23 regional titles in one data centre with the other titles is a great opportunity to have our ad sales operation running on one common platform,” he says.

Among the titles are South Western Times, Bunbury Herald, Albany Advertiser and the Geraldton Guardian.

Bringing the entire ad operation on to one platform gives WAN a number of benefits. “Consolidation of all our products on one platform provides future flexibility for further centralisation and the ability to have staff covered from other locations within the state when emergencies arise,” he says. “Plus it ensures that support can be handled via one department thereby reducing costs in both hardware and services.”

The AdDesk system replaces two separate and different systems at the 23 newspapers.  Four titles have been added so far, with the remaining 19 to follow over coming months.

Jones says the decision has perspectives beyond the current project: “The future development of the CCI system includes some exciting new concepts that we are sure will handle both our newspaper and digital requirements long into the future as we move towards being a true multimedia company.”

West Australian Newspapers is part of Australia’s Seven West Media, with interest including free-to-air broadcaster Seven Television, Pacific Magazines, and the Yahoo!7 internet platform.