Journal supply chain support provider Ringgold Inc has released findings from its recent survey, The Ringgold Challenge. The results indicate room for improvement in how publishers are applying customer data such as that relating to journal subscriptions, usage or submissions.
Survey results indicate that 76 percent of respondents considered that data could be managed more effectively. Only 15 percent respondents had actually calculated the size of their market and their penetration of it. Of those respondents that publish both books and journals, 41 percent had not tried to integrate subscription / purchase data (for example, to enable cross-marketing of related titles). Only 20 percent of respondents indicated that they have a defined process for keeping customer records up to date. Respondents estimated that inefficiencies resulting from poor data are resulting in an average loss of 156 hours per month.
The full findings recommend basic steps that can be taken to improve the accuracy, currency and integration of customer data in support of business processes and decision making, particularly in the areas of sales, marketing and customer services.
The findings of the survey are exclusively available to survey participants. The survey can still be taken at http://bit.ly/OMblff. New respondents will be scored against proposed best practice and will receive a copy of the current report.
The Ringgold Challenge is a free 10-minute survey developed by Ringgold and TBI Communications to help publishing organisations self-assess and benchmark their data and processes for selling to the institutional market. The tool is designed to be used by sales, marketing, customer service, technology and executive staff within scholarly and professional publishers, publishing societies and related content or service providers.
