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The Solutions Solution: Business
Publishing Moves to Client-Centric Content Systems |
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11 July 2005 |
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With VNU and other major publishers and aggregators
focusing on solutions providers for businesses, the art of
business publishing is taking a turn away from its roots of
title-centric publishing towards client-centric business
solutions. The channels through which business media
companies need to communicate with readers increasingly are
in the hands of businesses themselves, forcing media
companies to acquire a hand in defining the premium
contexts in which their content is demanded, viewed and
used by their clients. Not every business media company can
afford to become a full-range content solutions provider,
but every business media company needs a strategy for
adapting their products for maximum revenues in solutions
environments. |
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What is a
business media company today? It's far more than editorial, ads
and events, a fact underscored by today's
announcement of
IMS Health's acquisition by Dutch publishing giant
VNU. The
acquisition is significant from a number of specific angles,
many of which are
covered in our weblog by Shore Senior Analyst Janice
McCallum. In the broader scheme, though, this acquisition
underscores the continuing movement of business publishers and
aggregators towards being providers of a broad array of
business solutions for specific horizontal and vertical markets
instead of mere folios of publications. Some of these solutions
are marketing-oriented, providing companies highly tailored
electronic and print content and communications channels
to engage their existing and prospective clients. Some
solutions are research-oriented, providing companies with
in-depth background information on markets and sales prospects
to help them set product development and marketing strategies.
And some solutions are workflow-oriented, combining content
technologies and a deep understanding of user needs to put the
right content in front of the right people at the right time to
maximize productivity. Regardless of the type of solution
publishers and aggregators are working on both sides of
corporate firewalls to create content value that makes as much
difference to their client's balance sheets as it does to their
own.
This multi-faceted approach to client
content solutions is what it seen so clearly in the IMS Health
acquisition. While the trade and general press picks up on the
usual I'll-pick-up-this-basket-of-titles multi-million dollar
business media deals, the most important and impressive deals
are those that are enabling major publishers and aggregators to
deliver a broader range of business solutions that solve
specific problems for their clients. Corporations are much less
willing to purchase content "by the pound" through bulk or
individual subscriptions:
as pointed out in recent research, today's content
purchases by corporate libraries need to be tuned to the most
mission-critical business functions rather than the general
needs of business units. In this environment it takes a
new type of publisher and aggregator to succeed. Here are a few
thoughts as to what the winners and losers are going to look
like in the solutions space:
- Winners: client-focused publishers
and aggregators. It's of course no accident that the
likes of Thomson, LexisNexis and Factiva continue to move
towards
The New Aggregation, focusing on integrating their
content into workflow solutions for vertical and horizontal
markets. Proving out their solutions' value for specific
functional needs bolsters the value of their collections in
those contexts, tending to defer questions of the value of
the content bundled into the services. From a clients'
perspective owning rights to content is not as important as
owning the ability to get the right content to the right
people at the right time - regardless of its source. To fight
disintermediation in the workflow-oriented solutions
environment aggregators need to become more source-agnostic
and provide the ability for publishers beyond their usual
licensed coterie to join in their solutions - before
technology companies who don't have to protect licensing
agreements beat them to the punch. Publishers can counter by
developing content that's much more attuned to the specific
needs of specific clients - custom publishing that is far
easier to manage using advanced content management
technologies.
- Winners: solutions providers that
look beyond workflows. The great deal of focus given to
workflow solutions tends to obscure the wider range of
communications needs required from most business oriented
content solutions. Most aggregators strip out ads and other
marketing hooks from publishers' content that publishers need
to get in front of their readers to help facilitate
communications with other companies. Many workflow-oriented
solutions from technologists and aggregators neglect these
needs, increasing the likelihood that publishers will solve
this problem themselves for greater profits. Moving from
advertising to sales lead generation to facilitating
transactions is a natural progression long supported in
financial content markets, a progression that needs to be
supported more broadly in solutions from both publishers and
aggregators behind corporate firewalls.
- Losers: business publishers that
focus on title-based ads more than context-based solutions.
While many publishers such as VNU are moving aggressively
towards a revenue mix that includes a healthy dose of many
types of solutions for business, there is still a boatload of
publishers who are just getting used to the idea that online
revenues are a good thing. With the context of electronic
content controlled by so many intermediaries it is becoming
increasingly difficult for publishers to be ensured that
content under a specific title's banner is always going to be
the main beneficiary of ad revenues. A solutions approach to
getting content in front of clients places the focus on not
titles but client-centric solutions as the most powerful
context in which an ad can be placed. Business publishers
need to get used to the idea that electronic content benefits
from traveling to these client-centric contexts and that
their margins are following the content along its path. This
means thinking about your content as objects that can travel
from place to place within various solutions and that can
adapt its monetization capabilities to its context readily.
Notably there are far fewer competent and
well-financed business content solutions providers than there
are business publishers today, with smart companies like VNU
identifying the best opportunities for complementary markets
and acquiring solutions depth for those niches. This does not
necessarily mean that business publishers outside of the
solutions loop will wither away, but it may mean that they are
going to have to content themselves with more narrow roles than
they had when publishing technologies left a fairly even
playing field for them. The long-established symbiosis between
editorial and ad marketing staffs may be breaking down as
editorial content finds many new ways in which to be monetized
in business environments, with many of the most lucrative
opportunities outside of traditional advertising and licensing
agreements. Publishers need to be aware of these opportunities
and position their content aggressively for reusability
in solutions environments that may be far away from their own
marketing environments. There's no one perfect solutions for
managing business content solutions, but if you're not part of
the solution you're going to be part of the problem.
-
John Blossom
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