Version 3 · July 23, 2026
A mid-project check-in prepared for the executive leadership review — not an end-state recommendation.
Guaranty Media engaged Indigo Trigger to assess and document its current-state Lead-to-Cash workflow — pre-sales and CRM, order management and billing, and finance — and to recommend a more efficient, better-integrated end state. The work follows the arrival of a new CFO and a broader effort to organize how information flows from prospect to invoice, clear manual work off the team's desks, and free up time for planning and strategy.
Guaranty operates a set of media and digital businesses under Guaranty Communications — radio (Guaranty Broadcasting of Baton Rouge, including streaming and the LSU play-by-play contract), Guaranty Sports Networks (YouTube/livestream programmatic video and sponsorships), Guaranty Digital Media (GDM), and the GatorWorks in-house digital agency — alongside a newer healthcare-consulting entity, Guaranty Health Solutions (GHS). Two efforts shape the current picture: a planned consolidation of the two digital agencies (GDM into GatorWorks, targeted around 2027) and a move toward a single, unified sales team selling across radio and digital.
The corporate structure is deliberate: streaming and the LSU play-by-play contract are carried as separate profit centers, and revenue is intentionally distributed across entities in part to manage music-royalty exposure (royalty rates are calculated against revenue booked in the stations). Guaranty runs on a standard calendar fiscal year (not a 4-4-5 / 5-4-4 broadcast calendar). NetSuite has been the system of record since April 2022, with high-level history back to 2020.
This readout captures what the discovery sessions surfaced through July 13 and the follow-ups they opened. It is intended to level-set current state for the leadership team and frame the directional recommendations to test next — not to present final recommendations.
At kickoff, the engagement was scoped to three workstreams — Lead-to-Cash Workflow, NetSuite Optimization, and CRM Strategy — with the Data Warehouse Strategy and AI-ready architecture workstreams deferred until foundational decisions are made. Specifically, the assessment covered:
The current lead-to-cash workflow across the radio and digital businesses — systems used, who does what, and where revenue is recognized.
The NetSuite structure — subsidiaries, profit centers, chart of accounts, allocations, and reporting — and where it can be optimized.
The CRM and pre-sales environment across ShareBuilders (radio), Salesforce (GatorWorks), and HubSpot (GHS).
Order management and billing, including the Wide Orbit and Salesforce billing paths into NetSuite, and reporting/forecasting (including the in-house executive dashboard).
Corporate investment entities (equity-method investments, senior living, real estate) and the dormant Guaranty Entertainment entity are acknowledged but out of the operational focus. One related finding does bear on reporting accuracy: investment income is currently posted to revenue, and leadership would prefer to reclassify it below the operating line.
The discovery confirmed that Guaranty's systems are fragmented across its radio and digital businesses, resulting in no single standard sales process and repeated manual handoffs from pipeline through billing and revenue posting.
The root cause is well understood — the business has grown across multiple entities and product lines, each of which arrived with or adopted its own tools, leaving limited integration between steps.
Key Themes — Click to Expand
How systems talk (and mostly don't) across the Lead-to-Cash stack today:
Two billing paths, unevenly automated. GatorWorks flows Salesforce → MuleSoft → NetSuite automatically. Radio and GDM are billed and printed in Wide Orbit, and revenue is brought into NetSuite as a manual monthly journal entry — at summary level, with customer detail carried in the memo field rather than as NetSuite customers or items.
No single customer record. There is no shared account across ShareBuilders, Salesforce, HubSpot, Wide Orbit, and NetSuite; account and campaign data is re-keyed in multiple systems by multiple people, with inconsistent naming.
NetSuite is largely backward-looking for radio. No deferred revenue on the radio side and no advanced revenue module in use; recognition calculations are performed outside NetSuite. Forward-booked revenue exists in Wide Orbit and in Salesforce revenue schedules (and in the dashboard) but is treated as pacing, not booked deferred revenue.
Month-end depends on undocumented rules. Bringing Wide Orbit revenue into NetSuite relies on if-then business rules (filtering revenue codes, excluding donations, mapping profit centers) that are currently undocumented and reside with individual team members — a key-person dependency.
GatorWorks “actuals” billing is manual. Because media spend (Google, Meta, Trade Desk) rarely matches the budgeted amount, invoices are adjusted client-by-client each month via an editable projected-vs-actual field on the revenue schedule. Spend is tracked manually in Salesforce, on an Amex card, and in spreadsheets — creating more than one source of truth. A move to Ramp (virtual cards per customer, integrated to NetSuite) is under consideration.
Product and revenue taxonomy is inconsistent across systems. ShareBuilders package/product names (Integrated Media, NTR, endorsements/“lives”) do not align with Wide Orbit revenue/product codes or Salesforce naming. Salesforce alone carries about 60 GatorWorks products mapped many-to-one onto NetSuite's parent items.
Intercompany work is manual. GDM and GatorWorks perform work for each other and settle it manually today; the planned digital-agency consolidation (targeted around 2027) would remove that intercompany step.
Where each business unit lives across CRM, billing, and the path into the general ledger.
The following business and technical pain points were validated during the discovery sessions and frame the recommendations that follow.
Business Impact
Manual, undocumented month-end posting
Radio revenue is posted to NetSuite by hand each month using rules held by individual team members, creating reconciliation work and key-person risk.
GatorWorks actuals reconciliation
Manual per-client invoice adjustments every month — repeatedly cited as the single biggest finance pain point — because delivered media spend never lands exactly on budget. A blanket/fixed-billing model is an alternative under active discussion (see Recommendations).
No common sales process; manual forecasting
Reps generally enter opportunities only at the proposal stage, so there is no reliable early pipeline; the sales manager re-forecasts weekly from personal knowledge, which limits planning. GatorWorks' own forecast report (projected revenue less media spend) is close but still lacks a true pipeline feed.
No single customer record or order view
Account and order data live in separate systems, so managing an order — especially a change on a live radio schedule — means jumping between Wide Orbit, Salesforce, and NetSuite.
Split AR / no single source of truth
Accounts receivable sits in both Wide Orbit and NetSuite; leadership's stated goal is to consolidate all AR detail and customer profitability into NetSuite.
Limited forward visibility and profitability
No deferred revenue on radio, and no integrated view of project or customer profitability (GatorWorks tracks project hours in Teamwork, which is not connected to NetSuite, and media spend is not fed in).
Technical Pain Points
The only automated system integrations today are GatorWorks (Salesforce → MuleSoft → NetSuite) and the read-only API feeds into the in-house dashboard; all Wide Orbit revenue reaches NetSuite as a manual monthly journal entry.
The entity/profit-center structure is shaped in part by music-royalty exposure, and the company runs a standard calendar fiscal year.
There is no standardized or documented order-entry process on the radio side; multiple roles can create an order, gated by a ready / approve / process workflow that current volume keeps manageable.
There is no single customer record, and account data is re-keyed across ShareBuilders, Salesforce, HubSpot, Wide Orbit, and NetSuite; product/revenue naming is inconsistent across those systems.
Forward-booked revenue (pacing) is visible in Wide Orbit, Salesforce, and the dashboard, but is not recognized as deferred revenue in NetSuite; radio has none. GatorWorks recognizes net (not gross) revenue today, with a change under discussion.
Month-end revenue mapping depends on undocumented business rules (revenue-code filtering, donation exclusions, profit-center mapping) held by individuals.
GatorWorks actuals billing requires manual monthly adjustment because ad-platform spend is not fed into the finance or CRM systems, and spend is tracked in more than one place (Salesforce, Amex, spreadsheets).
Investment income is currently booked to revenue; leadership would prefer to reclassify it below the operating line, potentially into a separate investment/family-office entity.
Leadership confirmed that corporate investment entities and the dormant Guaranty Entertainment entity are out of operational focus for this effort.
The GatorWorks/Salesforce walkthrough (7/13) validated Salesforce as a strong CRM-consolidation candidate: a well-adopted, over-a-year-old instance whose revenue-schedule object already functions as a single source of truth, with NetSuite customer creation and invoicing triggered automatically once a revenue schedule is manually approved.
These are directional recommendations for the leadership discussion — not final decisions. They will be tested, prioritized, and turned into roadmaps with the subject-matter experts.
Establish a single customer record
Define one governed account model shared across CRM, billing, and NetSuite so a customer is visible end to end and re-keying becomes validation rather than re-entry. Include a cross-system product/revenue taxonomy so the same product is named consistently everywhere.
Consolidate onto one CRM for the unified sales team
Bring radio and digital pre-sales onto a single CRM so pipeline, activity, and forecasting come from one trusted place.
Connect order-to-cash
Build one version of financial truth
Stand up a compliant card-fee (surcharge / cash-discount) program
Adopt one compliant card-fee-offset program across all entities and roll it out to radio, where a high volume of card payments carries no fee offset today and leadership already supports change. Because surcharge/cash-discount rules vary by state and a flat percentage is not compliant everywhere, make gateway selection (Wide Orbit Payments / Basis vs. VersaPay) contingent on documented support for a compliant model, and standardize the rate and customer disclosure.
Enable cost accounting and customer/project profitability
Optimize NetSuite pragmatically
Preserve the granular chart of accounts leadership values (separate revenue and cost-of-sales accounts by entity provide reporting visibility). Focus optimization on profit-center hygiene (the used-once profit centers NetSuite will not hide), expense-allocation transparency, and enabling forward-looking revenue — rather than collapsing accounts into segments.
Unify proposals and sales enablement
Finish the AI-assisted proposal builder as a governed app (MCP-server back end with a simple web front end), re-brand its rules for both GatorWorks and radio, and wire it to PandaDoc e-sign inside the CRM so reps generate a compliant proposal and signature packet without leaving one ecosystem.
Apply automation and AI where they earn their place
Mature the forecasting/BI hub, add structured nurture cadences, and target repetitive manual work — applied only to systems the teams will actually adopt.
A target-state view: marketing, CRM, trafficking, and finance operating as one integrated flow across the business.
Each step below will validate integration capability, the work required, and the timing and resources needed as we move toward end-state recommendations.
Leadership check-in
Level-set current state, review these recommendations, and confirm priorities at the executive leadership review.
NetSuite deep dive
Work sessions with the finance team in the NetSuite sandbox on profit-center hygiene, the chart of accounts, the potential reorg / new subsidiary for investment accounts, expense management, and forward-looking revenue. Confirm how history would be restated if the structure changes (prospective vs. retrospective).
CRM rollout & workflow follow-ups
With the GatorWorks/Salesforce workflow now walked end to end (7/13) and Salesforce validated as the consolidation platform, resolve the open items GatorWorks leadership raised directly:
Billing & payments
Evaluate moving radio billing into NetSuite vs. status quo, and the online-payment path (Wide Orbit Payments vs. VersaPay), including surcharge / cash-discount compliance and gateway support.
Order-management deep dive
Map advertiser records to Wide Orbit priority codes and define which order attributes live in CRM vs. traffic vs. NetSuite for radio, digital, and blended deals. Goal: one order-of-record per deal, fewer approvers touching it, and a clean handoff into trafficking and billing.
Media-spend automation
Define an ad-platform integration (Google, Meta, Trade Desk) into NetSuite/CRM to end manual actuals reconciliation, decide actuals vs. blanket billing, connect Teamwork project cost to NetSuite, and scope Ramp for per-customer cost coding.
Taxonomy & documentation
Harmonize product/revenue codes across systems (starting from the Wide Orbit → GL cleanup) and capture the month-end business rules and a day-in-the-life process map so current-state knowledge is no longer person-dependent.
Design end-state workflows and roadmaps
Turn the validated recommendations into draft roadmaps that address the gaps and pain points through integration and automation.
Upcoming Deliverable
Turn the validated recommendations into draft roadmaps that address the gaps and pain points through integration and automation — for review with SMEs and the leadership team.
Directional recommendations tested and prioritized with the subject-matter experts before end-state commitments.
Every discovery and design session behind this readout, with attendees, a short summary, and the recording. Filter by topic or search for a person or keyword.
Showing 15 of 15 sessions
Confirmed the initial three workstreams — Lead-to-Cash, NetSuite Optimization, and CRM Strategy — and discussed profit-center simplification, Ramp, CRM consolidation, and the project cadence.
Project kickoff covering Guaranty Media's entities, finance systems, billing/AR gaps, project accounting, media-spend reconciliation, payment processing, and reporting goals.
Mapped the dashboard, Wide Orbit, NetSuite, order-entry, billing, month-end close, and journal-entry processes; identified manual and nonstandard workflows.
Reviewed ShareBuilders' sales workflow, CRM limitations, product-code harmonization, reporting, proposal generation, and Salesforce/NetSuite automation.
Discovery session — findings summarized in the readout above.
Midpoint assessment readout covering CRM consolidation, Wide Orbit-to-NetSuite invoicing, NetSuite structure, Ramp automation, and process cleanup before automation.
Guaranty leadership approved the roadmap/investment for back-office consolidation (Wide Orbit, NetSuite, Salesforce). Covered Wide Orbit to NetSuite integration next steps, NetSuite revenue code/profit center overhaul, Ramp vs. project codes, and Salesforce product catalog gaps (missing broadcast & GatorWorks digital products). Follow-ups scheduled for Thu (Ramp), next Wed (revenue codes), next Thu (Salesforce).
Devon walked Walt through Guaranty's Ramp expense setup and NetSuite integration objects. Core blocker: overly granular NetSuite structure (~36 profit centers) to be simplified via corporate-unit booking plus monthly allocation. NetSuite education session and Wide Orbit integration doc requests set up.
Converged on segment strategy (Profit Center, Department, Location, Subsidiary). Rev Code 1 moves to Customer Master; Rev Code 2/3 mirror item hierarchy; LSN becomes a Department; roughly 17 subsidiaries consolidate to about 4. NetSuite sandbox session set for 8/7.
Reviewed Salesforce revenue schedules and billing workflows, monthly actuals adjustments, forecasting gaps, and the division of responsibilities between Salesforce, Wide Orbit, and NetSuite.
Opening segment was Zoom/Fathom notetaker troubleshooting (Walter's new Indigo Trigger Zoom account). Main NetSuite sandbox working session followed and is not captured in this excerpt.
Finalized NetSuite GL structure, customer-master cleanup, Wide Orbit invoice/payment integration questions, profit-center design, revenue recognition, and commissions.
Wide Orbit invoice-closing mechanics pending WO recording review. Agency gross-up/commission logic to live in Salesforce, not NetSuite. Confirmed straight-line RevRec. Customer master design: Salesforce originates leads, NetSuite owns financial fields with a new 'prospect advertiser' finance-approval gate.
Finalized requirements for agency commissions and customer master process. New accounts staged as 'Prospects' in Salesforce, approved as 'Customers' in NetSuite. Commissions calculated at product level in Salesforce, passed to NetSuite as line items. Straight-line RevRec confirmed; 'RevRec' renamed 'Billing Schedule' in Salesforce.
Final recommendation presented: Salesforce as CRM, NetSuite as finance system of record, Wide Orbit retained only for broadcast trafficking. Client agreed with direction but flagged Wide Orbit's API as the biggest risk. Pivoted to a phased plan prioritizing digital-only orders. Chris to revise budget/scope; Kelli to send sample GL export file.