2. 2
Introduction
Michael Cairns is a publishing and media executive with over 25 years experience in
business strategy, operations and technology implementation. As a business
executive, Mr. Cairns has successfully managed several troubled and under-
performing businesses, creating new business opportunities, developing new funding
sources and enhancing shareholder value for investors. His years spent as an
operating executive have largely been with brand-name publishing companies such
as Macmillan, Inc., Berlitz International, Wolters Kluwer Health, Reed Elsevier and
R.R. Bowker. As a consultant, Mr. Cairns has worked with clients as diverse as
AARP, Hewlett Packard, InterPublic Companies and Reed Elsevier with an emphasis
on business strategy, market development and corporate development.
His skills and experience include:
Business and corporate strategy development and implementation
Operations management and business transformation
Traditional and digital publishing and operations
Print-to-digital transformation and adoption of new business models
Software development and software services
Mr. Cairns holds an MBA (Finance) from Georgetown University and a BA from
Boston University. He has served on several boards and advisory groups including
the Association of American Publishers, Book Industry Study Group and the
International ISBN organization. Additionally, he has public and private company
board experience.
2
Michael Cairns
Information Media Partners
Strategy Consulting
New York, London, Melbourne
Tel: 908 938 4889
Michael.cairns@infomediapartners.com
Find me:
LinkedIn Twitter Blog Flickr InstaGram
3. 3
Information Media Partners
Michael Cairns established Information Media Partners in 2006 as a boutique strategy
consulting firm focused on the information and education publishing segment. The work
conducted by the firm includes product development, corporate development, sales
management and corporate reorganizations. We work with established businesses, private
equity owners and potential acquirers.
Examples of our work include:
Reorganized and re-focused a $25 million software publishing company by aligning
business operations with client priorities; implementing internal collaboration tools and
project management standards; re-building executive team to focus on effective and
efficient management
Defined a new business strategy for a large non-profit association and advocacy group,
expanding their business model into global markets to exploit their core knowledge and
expertise across a broader market
Led an information technology capabilities review at a large international advertising
holding company. Completed over 200 interviews in 15 international offices and multiple
group focus sessions to define the operational ‘gaps’ between existing agency capabilities
and those necessary and important for client delivery by region
Completed a sales management effectiveness review for a global software company and
defined six key project initiatives to improve sales effectiveness, market development and
account management
We approach our client engagements in a standardized, logical manner which creates the best
environment to identify key business drivers, administrative and logistical road blocks and/or
product or market definition issues. Our investigative approach leads to better insights into
your businesses and supports the development of workable solutions and recommendations
for success.
Visit the Information Media Partners website for more information.
Sample Client List
4. 4
Technology in publishing, how it is implemented
and how it is used is increasingly the
differentiator - not the content! - between the
publishers that will succeed and those that will
fail.
5. 5
Introduction and agenda
Introduction & background
Historical perspective
Technology in the back office
Supporting the product development value chain
Customer-centric technology
Democratization of the publishing process
Forecasting the future of publishing technology
6. 6
Historical perspective
Over the past 500 years we have gone from:
One Book => Bible
One Author => Monk
One Process => Years
But only in the past 10 years have we achieved:
Any Book => Including ‘my book’
Any Author => Including me (and my friends)
Any process => Within minutes
Functionality has expanded at the expense of cost: Far more for far
less
Publishing operations are increasingly centered on technical
solutions: enterprise resource planning, financial modeling, supply
chain logistics
Publishing is less about print on paper and increasingly about
technology
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Technology in the back office
Until mid 1980s may publishing companies relied on batch processing and
card key processing
No technology integration of back office functions: Accounting a manual
process until wide adoption of personal computers in mid 1980s
Book publishing followed newspaper publishing in automation: i.e.: desk-top
publishing
In mid-1990’s larger publishing companies began implementing ERP (SAP,
Oracle, BAAN) systems in accounting
In late 1990’s more publishing companies adopted data warehouse
technology (Oracle, Sybase)
In early 2000’s publishing companies began adopting supply chain and process
improvement technology
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Technology in back office
Significant benefits of scale for publishers that implemented these
solutions early
Enabled gains in productivity
Raised reliance on in-house technical expertise: IT department became
part of executive management
Expanded publisher’s control over processes: all page layout, data keying,
etc. brought in-house at significant cost savings
Created ‘technical capacity’ and ‘capability’ that is now important for
expansion
Greater appreciation for technology as a business driver
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Supporting the publishing value chain
Desk-top production in early – mid 1980’s
Rapid increase in productivity
Speed to market
Significant reduction in expense
Quark, Pagemaker, dBase
SGML: highly ‘expensive’ mark-up language
Database publishing
Creation of structured databases that were searchable by customers
CDROM launch in mid 1980s: Huge expansion in information products
Online information products: MAID, Dialog, with structured query
formats and regimented ‘professional’ only products
Merchandising
Prior to Amazon.com virtually no marketing and merchandising was
‘electronic’
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Supporting the publishing value chain - trade
Entire publishing process is now automated
Authors submit files
Files are databased
Increasingly content is tagged for merchandising
Merchandising driving content management
Amazon.com and on-line retailers
Publisher’s developing own web presence
Creation of content warehouses: Harpercollins, Random House, Hachette,
etc.
Recognition that ‘sampling’ via web browser should be similar to an in-store
experience
Community
Development of author specific sites: authonomy.com
Development of reader sites: Bookarmy.com, librarything.com
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Supporting the publishing value chain - education
Similar process improvements to Trade
Maintains a print model
Experimentation is gaining ground
Implementation limits: Level of technical capacity at schools, costs of
technology, capacity to evaluate technology based tools
CDROM publishing partially successful
Stand alone products
Supplemental products
Using technology to broaden product offering
Educational content
Assessment and remediation
Student performance and monitoring, Class planning
Infrastructure
Education publishers become solution providers
Pearson: My Math Lab
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Supporting the publishing value chain – professional
Current large information publishers were founded on ‘old
proprietary’ database businesses: MAID, Dialog, Infotrak
Some included hardware: Reuters, Thomson
Vast consolidation around segments: Medical, Financial,
Legal, Tax
Professional publishing leads way in development of
‘unstructured databases’: migrating away from table driven
(Oracle db) approaches
Increased importance of xml tagging: programmatic
importation of data from multiple sources creates valuable
whole
Information publishers are innovators in use of technology to
power their businesses
Elsevier: Oncologystat.com
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Customer-centric technology
Development of ‘platforms’: from print journal to e-delivery of specific
articles
Publishers are developing tools and applications to support use of content
Content in context
Content as part of the work-flow
Elsevier, Reed, West,
Books and e-Books
Early promise/hype never delivered
Kindle isn’t an “e-book” reader it is an “e-platform”
Sony e-Reader, Iliad, IPhone (Stanza – Reader)
Flexible screens, Converged content
Subscription models replace purchase
Library context
Consumer: content on the move
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Democratization of publishing process
Incredible explosion of content
Anyone is a publisher
Any type of content
Driven by access to professional tools
From InDesign to Dreamweaver to Blogger: Barriers are eliminated
Computing power cheap
Network effects significant
Self-publishing process
660,000 titles with Lulu.com: $99/per title for a printed book
On-demand publishing programs: no title out of print
Photobooks
Blurb.com, Photobucket, etc.
Increasingly ‘mystique’ of publishing is eliminated: Consumers will source their
own content, produce it and consume it without (direct) involvement of
traditional publisher
What happens in nations where traditional publishing is less entrenched – India,
China, Africa?
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New entrants and wild cards
Google and the Google Book Program
Significant potential
Closed system
Digitization generally
To what end?
How much is too much?
Who is in charge and are we making mistakes we will regret later?
The Network Effect
Potential vast productivity and effectiveness gain from network
computing
Collaboration and Crowdsourcing
Shared applications and application development
Maintaining the value of content vs ‘good enough’
Significant challenge for all publishers: commoditization
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Forecasting the future of technology in publishing
Publishing and technology will become synonymous (if it hasn’t already)
Many losers who are slow to migrate to web delivery, xml based and
‘open’ social network orientation
Expansion of solutions based publishing: content is secondary to the
provision of a work-flow solution, an integrated application and/or an
open ‘widget’ application enabling further leverage
Amazon web services
Education publishers will follow information publishers in rapid adoption
of solutions based applications
All publishers will be slow to adopt open social networks and new
entrants will take market share
Google isn’t finished
17. 17
Please review my blog post associated
with this presentation:
http://personanondata.blogspot.com/2007
/12/technology-in-publishing-
overview.html
Michael Cairns
Managing Partner
Michael.Cairns@InfoMediaPartners.com
908 938 4889
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