Ashton Report

Modern-day journalism demands modern-day technology
With more than 40 years of experience in the commercial foodservice industry, Robin Ashton wanted to launch a new endeavor with a paid newsletter subscription, completely managed in the cloud. How was he going to tackle this with a small, non-technical team?

The Need

The Ashton Report was to have two tiers, a weekly newsletter delivered to all subscribers and a monthly newsletter for paid subscribers. To manage this, Mr. Ashton decided to put together a website that collects credit cards securely, manages subscribers and their paid subscriptions, and showcases his thought leadership on the web and through email. To manage these moving parts, The Ashton Report needed a full technical team that was reliable, available and knew the best ways to deliver a great experience to his readers.

The Solution

Dorian Solutions met with The Ashton Report team to understand their goals and outline the best available tools to get the job done. A variety of tools needed to be integrated to make things work automatically and smoothly, all small parts of a bigger whole. After analyzing Content Manage Systems (CMS), email marketing applications, credit card processors, and hosting options, the correct tools were weaved together to build out an online subscription site for The Ashton Report’s subscribers to stay up to date.

Once the system was built, Dorian Solutions took over the day-to-day management of the system so The Ashton Report team could do what they do best: keep a pulse on the commercial foodservice industry and report to their subscribers. Dorian Solutions remains the team that The Ashton Report relies on to aggregate their reporting into a digital form, prepare the newsletters, update the website, and make sure technology is the easiest part of their operations.