A hybrid media network placing digital and physical ads across airport lounges, aircraft screens, and commuter transit. Their audience was narrow and valuable: business decision-makers who spent their lives in motion.
The model worked, but the operation behind it didn't. Campaigns were coordinated through spreadsheets, email threads, and a forest of Post-its. Physical signage had its own cadence, digital programming had another, and billing lived somewhere between accounting exports and memory. Nothing connected. Every new advertiser added strain rather than capacity. Off-the-shelf software offered pieces of what they needed but nothing close to the integrated workflow their business relied on. Without automation, growth meant hiring in proportion to revenue. That math never pays out.
Boulder began by mapping the actual order-to-cash flow. Not the aspirational one; the lived one. The diagrams made the problem obvious: EMN wasn't running a media network. They were running a logistics company disguised as one. Boulder built an integrated platform that matched the way the business operated. One system linked CRM activity, inventory availability, campaign scheduling, physical-signage logistics, billing, accounting reconciliation, and notifications. Nothing existed off the shelf that could even approximate this. It was built in a pre-cloud era, so Boulder maintained it end-to-end: hosting, uptime, training, and ongoing operational support. The system became a single point of truth that didn't rely on institutional memory to hold itself together.
Executives finally had visibility into unit economics. Sales teams stopped negotiating blind. Operations no longer had to match signage, shipping, and digital placements manually. Billing was reliable and tied directly to activity rather than guesswork. EMN could scale revenue without scaling headcount.
The clarity created by Boulder's platform strengthened EMN's financial story and became part of the diligence package. Buyers were given access to the system to verify assumptions directly. The company was acquired by RMG Networks, and the platform continued operating as part of the business well beyond the acquisition.