A couple themes I noticed at the conference:
- price scrapping and analysis
- social listening
- moving from FileMaker to a SaaS tool
Michael Cader (Publishers Lunch)
Workflow: RSS content -> bit.ly -> publn.ch
Tracks click this way and builds brands
Uses: widget box (widgets that can run on multiple sites), WordPress, SocialCast (internal communication), Peer1Hosting, Virtual Merchant, MobileStorm
Ken Michaels (Hachette Book Group)
Hachette has 18 months in the cloud
Uses SaaS for email, piracy monitoring, eProcessing, RoyaltyShare, SalesForce.com
BookRadar offers price & on sale date compliance checking, correct errors & omissions in supply chain, scorecard for vendor performance, manually track titles on vendors sites. Price monitoring offers a view of discrepancies. On sale monitoring finds titles not on sale at the right time. Merchandise placement monitoring shows if the title is on the homepage, a banner, etc and the on/off date along with a screen shot of the actual site with the title.
Publicity tool: PIP (publicity intelligence platform) - offers easy export of tour feeds for use by third parties (such as the author). The site is divided into Contact Management, List Management, and Campaign Management.
ChapterShare offers Facebook integration is offered for easy sharing. It gathers data on readers when they read an excerpt or purchase a title.
Russ Stanton & John Wicker (TATA Consultancy Services TCS)
The most likely issues a company will have with the cloud:
1. fear of security
2. skepticism of ROI
By 2015 there will be 1 billion tablet users and 3 billion smart phone users. This is half the world population. Are you equipped to handle 4 billion customers?
You need your content to be product and presentation agnostic, you need to aggregate, and you need big data (velocity, etc.).
Ted Hill (THA Consulting)
It's not just SaaS (software as a service), it's also: PaaS - platform as a service IaaS - Infrastructure as a service
When should IT be involved?
* more than a few users
* noticeable amount of money
* need to push or pull data from another system
* when IT is helpful
Don't inhibit things like DropBox, but do use the rules above.
Check list for using cloud services
* are IT and management aligned in the build vs. buy decision?
* ready to contribute to best practices and evolve with your peers?
* willing to continually train and learn?
* do you know your content & data?
* are you thinking strategically rather than tactically?
* are you willing to simplify?
* how will the cloud interface with the enterprise?
* do you have content standards and repositories for both content and metadata?
* do you know what SLA you need?
Rick Joyce (Perseus Books Group)
Perseus has an HTML first workflow and a large North Plains DAM running on Constellation with title status and sales reports on a web portal. They use Crimson Hexagon for social listening.
Questions to ask when considering cloud:
* What do we want to be good at?
* What do we need to own?
* How stable is the supplier?
* What is the suppliers development track record and engineering plan for the future?
* What training, support, trouble shooting does the supplier offer?
* Does the supplier show ongoing excellence?
* What data integrity is offered (backups, track record)?
* What privacy and security is offered?
* What data integration/interoperability (in/out of data) is offered?
* What third party needs are there?
Could is:
* easy to pilot
* easy to scale
* initially a low cost
Michael Covington (David C Cook)
Legacy systems bread pockets of "tribal knowledge"
A service oriented architecture -- where cost and productivity live in harmony
Created www.christianmanuscriptsubmissions.com
* a virtual slush pile
* $99 submission fee
* offers editorial seal of approval
* can be mined for "digital first editions"
* Bowker took it and created their own separate process
Benefits of SaaS
- lower upfront
- scaleable
- less need for IT
- better support
- less "tribal knowledge"
Problems with SaaS
- can be rigid (not customizable)
- can lack security
- doesn't always play well with others
- may have bad customer service
- might not have an SLA
David C Cook uses
ERP JD Edwards
DAD FireBrand CS
Eloquence
NetGalley
Ingram
Sales SalesForce.com
bombBomb
MailChimp
Cushy CMS
Production
FireBrand
PANEL
Potential issues with cloud
* legacy or in house systems can't communicate with cloud system
* certain customizations can't be done
* IT frustration with lack of business to IT communication
* No oversight of who is doing what with SaaS
Yuvi Kochar (The Washington Post Company)
Does not offer SLA (a contract of uptime, etc), but instead a guarantee that your data will be transitioned to the next system if the partnership ends. Allowing the customer to move to another supplier so easily is something everyone easily understands and keeps the level of quality better since the supplier knows how easily the customer could leave. A provider is then a commodity not a customer and you treat it as such.
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