One of the most important trends in technology over the past two years has been the emergence of Wikis. Like many newish technologies there is a lot of controversy and confusion about Wikis. To many people the word Wiki is linked primarily to the Wikipedia and to the other projects of Wikimedia. To others, Wiki technology is open source collaboration technology. And more recently, Wiki technology has been developed to provide easily installed, high value solutions to a number of enterprise level workflow problems. Over the next week or so, I’ll be writing entries on a number of key questions concerning Wikis and their role in the strategy for forward looking publishing organizations.
Author: Steve Paxhia (Page 3 of 3)
One of the themes that we’ll be stressing on this blog is cross-media publishing strategies and we’ll als be offering several sessions on this topic at the SanFrancisco Gilbane Conference in April. We’d like to hear your nominations for examples of products that started life in a traditional print format but have now evolved to successful product offerings with multiple media options. We’ll also like to know about successful new product offerings that were created in a media-neutral approach. To respond, please e-mail me Steve Paxhia at steve@gilbane.com.
Dick Harrington is the CEO of Thomson. During a December investor’s conference presentation, he clearly described Thomson’s future strategy. Their vision is to be the leading provider of workflow solutions to business and professional customers. Their goal is to develop “must-have” products with high utilization and renewal rates. I would assume that a recurring revenue model is also preferred. As they create technology to leverage their content, they find that they achieve greater leverage and higher margins. This is a very sound strategy.
His decision to divest Thomson Learning aside, it would seem that there are excellent opportunities awaiting College and Educational publishers who employ similar strategies. Students, professors, teachers, and parents could all benefit from tighter integration of enabling technology and multimedia including simulations with more traditional text based materials. Many publishers are already finding success with next generation products that offer customers their choice of media options combined with technology that helps this group of professionals do their jobs better. The key is to focus on customer needs and creating innovative new products rather than creating new media versions of existing products. These new products also have the potential to be licensed for specific terms and usages rather than be sold outright. This model would likely accelerate revenue growth and yield better margins.
We’ll strive to provide examples of successful ventures in later posts…
Welcome to the Gilbane Group’s new Blog on the Publishing Industry. Our team of Analyst/Consultants will be offering their thoughts a variety of topics including:
- Opportunities and Challenges presented by new technology and media options
- Key new technologies to watch in the coming year
- Case studies demonstrating current best practices
- News and commentary about Publishing Companies and their technology partners
Think of this Blog as a perpetual iteration of the Publishing Track at our Gilbane Conferences. To that end, we welcome your questions and encourage your comments…
At this year’s fall conference, the CEO of Art Plus Technology—Elizabeth Gooding—gave an excellent presentation concerning her firm’s approach to providing the customers of financial firms with improved statements and communications. She and her clients set very tough targets. The statements must be highly individualized, be attractive in both electronic and print formats, be produced in a timely fashion, and of course, cost less to produce. In meeting these goals, Elizabeth and her team found ways to break down long established practices that had become limiting factors in improving the delivery of information to customers.
What does this have to do with publishers in general? Most publishing enterprises have their own long established practices that have made them very successful through the years. We think that the publishers who will gain market share in the next decade are those who are most willing to re-examine those practices to enable new product offerings that will appeal to the demands of today’s customers. Over the next week or so, we’ll look at some examples of different strategies and tactics.
