Friday, August 17, 2018

The Publishing Industry’s Blindspot: Technology Spending

I wrote the following for the BISG newsletter this month:
Sharing operational data and information does not come easily for publishing companies. Many other industries benefit from benchmarking data that enables business improvement but, as an industry, publishing seems uninterested in this philosophy of continuous improvement.
Seeking detailed information about technology spending for a series of investor presentations, I found that this information doesn’t exist. While the Association of American Publishers (AAP) has long collected high-level sales and operating data, this effort is of marginal value if a business is truly committed to benchmarking and measuring their performance across a set of key performance measures.
The AAP numbers do have value, but they lack the specificity and detail needed for true and close comparisons of operating data that can drive performance improvement. Based on my experience, the way that publishing thinks about data has not changed even as the industry migrates from legacy-based technology and operating environments (where “fixed” models rule) to one where flexibility drives everything from content packages to cloud-based applications. 

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