Harcourt Education Australia and Reed Publishing New Zealand are the latest in the Reed Elsevier group of companies to invest in the Bookmaster system from TMS Tailor Made Systems (now part of the IBS Group ).
They join Reed Elsevier LexisNexis (legal publishing) and Elsevier (Science and Medical) subsidiaries in utilising the specialised book distribution and publishing solution.
The recent decision to invest in Bookmaster was made because, “running a publishing business is becoming more complex, for example dealing with author contracts,” explained David O’Brien, managing director of Harcourt.
“Changing industry requirements, such as ONIX, have also made it inevitable that a publishing-specific solution such as Bookmaster was needed, rather than continue with our accounting package and other workaround systems.”
Harcourt Education, based in Melbourne (and an operating division of Reed International Books Australia), is an educational publisher of materials for primary and secondary school children.
The company became aware recently that its accounting system, while reliable, was not geared to cope with increasingly complicated publishing requirements, such as CAL payments, royalty rises, royalty advances and dealing with sub-rights, to name a few.
“Because our other companies within the Reed Elsevier Group were using Bookmaster, we knew that the system easily handled complex royalty payments, as it comes with an automated Royalty system,” said O’Brien.
“And, like everyone else, we’re also aware of the change to a 13-digit ISBN due in 2007. This would have meant doing substantial work to our current systems, while Bookmaster is already configured to handle the ISBN change.
“It got to the point where we realised that investing in Bookmaster would be more cost-efficient than staying with our existing system, as it will automate and simplify many complex tasks that currently consume our resources and our time.”
Both Harcourt Education and Reed Publishing in New Zealand have bought the Bookmaster base modules, which include Order Processing & Billing, Returns Management, Warehouse & Inventory Management, Distribution Requirements Planning, Financials and Business Intelligence (BI).
Other optional modules chosen include Book Production, Royalties and Customer Relationship Management (CRM).
The main reason both companies chose Bookmaster is the level of integration the system offers.
“What we liked the most,” emphasised O’Brien, “is that just about everything we need to perform to run the business is housed inside one system.
“Being able to link all the areas together from book production, royalties, order processing to distribution and returns, will improve accuracy of data, minimise time and effort currently required to perform many tasks and will improve visibility across departments. This will allow us to take the business to another level.”
Reed Publishing will go live with the Bookmaster system later in 2005 while Harcourt Education is due to go live on Bookmaster in early 2006.
International Business Systems, is a leading provider of business software for supply chain management, business intelligence, financial control, and demand-driven manufacturing.