Case Study Klopotek software implementation – Product Planning and Management (PPM)

ABOUT MOODY

“Moody Publishers’ beginnings were fueled by the huge vision of Dwight Lyman Moody to take the message of the gospel to the masses via Christian books. The formation of the Bible Institute Colpor-tage Association (BICA) in 1894 had the revolu-tionary goal of promoting inexpensive Christian books for Christians to grow and non-Christians to have a quick introduction to the gospel.

Moody founded BICA merely eight years after beginning only the second Bible school in the USA. The Moody Bible Institute (MBI) today is one of the most well-known evangelical institutions train-ing and equipping young people for the mission fi eld in the USA and abroad, pastoral positions, as well as other various forms of ministry. Moody Publishers continues to operate as the publishing arm of MBI.

Consistent with the vision of D.L. Moody, Moody Publishers has always been committed to fi nding excellent vehicles to get the message of Christ to the masses. Moody Publishers is far and above one of the most trustworthy publishers in the industry.“

Source: www.moodypublishers.com

Project Focus: Product Planning and Management (PPM): Production, Scheduling, Production Cockpit, Contracts, Rights & Royalties (CR&R)

Project Timeframe: April 2008: Integrated version of GTS UNISON and Klopotek PPM

June 2008: PPM Product Pool andBusiness Partner Pool

June 2009: PPM Production, Scheduling, Production Cockpit

August 2009: Contracts, Rights & Royalties (CR&R)

Project Location:Chicago

Contact Moody Publishers: Duane Koenig, Director of Operations duane.koenig@moody.edu www.moodypublishers.com

Contact Klopotek: Jai Putrevu, Key Account Manager j.putrevu@klopotek.com www.klopotek.com

Moody Publishers has been working with an integrated version of Global Turnkey Systems’ product UNISON and Klopotek PPM since April 2008. In the middle of 2008, Moody implemented the PPM Product Pool and Business Part-ner Pool. Since that time, PPM has become the sole repository for maintaining product and author information. In June of 2009, Moody went live with the Production, Scheduling, and Production Cockpit modules, and August saw the beginning of phase 3: implementing Contracts, Rights & Royalties (CR&R). Duane Koenig, Director of Operations, and Gregory Miller, Manager of Busi-ness Solutions, explain why this software selection has radically improved many of Moody’s publishing processes, why Klopotek gives them vastly im-proved ability to monitor all aspects of rights management and payment, and what future plans are with Klopotek.

Duane and Gregory, you were both responsi-ble for implementing Klopotek’s Product Plan-ning and Management system (PPM) for Title Management and Production in 2009, and for Contracts, Rights & Royalties (CR&R) from 2009-10. What were your reasons for replacing the legacy system?

Duane: In some ways, there was no legacy sys-tem for the functionality that we’ve acquired with the Klopotek system. As far as a central repository for product information is con-cerned, we didn’t have anything like that. We used the UNISON system [a product of Global GTS, now Klopotek North America], which is a very good and stable fulfi llment system, but it doesn’t have a way to hold the metadata of a title.

“Implementing Klopotek has aided in reporting, so that we can do analysis work to make better-informed decisions on what we do to enhance the market share.” (Gregory Miller)

Duane Koenig in front of the Moody Publishers building in central Chicago.

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So what really drove us initially to start look-ing at a new system was that we heard from our customers that we need ONIX metadata

for our products – and we didn’t have a central repository for all of that information. It was in silos all over the place: it might have been in a marketing database, in an author relations database, or Access® database, and some of it was in UNISON. So that was really our fi rst driving need – how do we get all of our prod-uct metadata together in one place? We were looking at another company that we had already had a partnership with, and we’d actually made the decision to proceed with that company when the Klopotek and Global people came in and said: “We are going to merge companies – you might want to take a look at our system.” And obviously we did, and that’s what we ended up with.

When we looked at Klopotek’s Product Plan-ning and Management system we saw that it has rich functionality, but it also had the abil-

ity to store all the metadata and links to cover images and author bios. Plus in the Contracts, Rights & Royalties module, PPM had subrights.

Can you tell us more about your requirements when looking for a new application? And why did you opt for Klopotek?

Duane: When you’re looking for a new ap-plication, you want to look at the company

it’s coming from. When we looked at who Klopotek was – their history, their market share, and who their clients were – we felt pretty confi dent in Klopotek as a choice. As I said, we needed to have title informa-tion management – that was a critical piece. Production and scheduling management was

very important. We were also looking for an upgrade in the area of royalties, although that came a bit later.

Gregory: Another very important requirement that could be glossed over easily was the abil-ity for the new application to still talk with – as seamlessly as possible – the fulfi llment sys-tem we had in place. And with Klopotek and UNISON coming with that interface joined in, I think we got an interface that was much more tightly coupled than we could have gotten in any other option we had. We could not have attained the accuracy and the fi ne-tuners that we have today if Klopotek had not acquired Global.

Duane: Yes, we can’t overstate how impor-tant that was, having the interfaces built for

us essentially, and that we got to be part in determining what these interfaces would do. That was the clincher.

Gregory: Another really important key was the fl exibility of the system. There’s a lot of things that we’re doing for which there was no place to put data. In PPM there are standard fi elds, but only with the classifi cations we were able to add the things that we needed to do the additional types of interfaces with other ap-plications, especially with fi les, keeping links updated, and covers. Had we not had that, it would have created additional silos of data that now we’re able to still keep and incorpo-rate within PPM.

Duane: Having worked with it now for a couple of years I just have to add that the functionality is so rich and so fl exible that it’s just a wonderful system.

Gregory: Yes. We have never said, from the onset, I wish we had gotten a different system. Everything so far we’ve been able to work out – and still do the things that we need to do.

What are the most important benefi ts of hav-ing implemented Klopotek?

Duane: PPM has become the sole repository

“ When we looked Klopotek’s Product Planning and Management system

we saw that it has rich functionality, but it also had the ability to store all the metadata and links to cover images and author bios. Plus in the Con-tracts, Rights & Royalties module, PPM had subrights. ” Duane Koenig

Gregory Miller, Manager of Business Solutions, stresses the importance of having one integrated system with one single database, so that no additional silos of data have to be created.

“ When we looked at who Klopotek was – their history, their market

share and who their clients were – we felt pretty confi dent in Klopotek as a choice.” Duane Koenig

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for product and author information. From there we pull sell sheets, our full-line catalog, website content – and we’ll soon start with the ONIX data feeds. We’re using the Production, Scheduling, and the Production Cockpit mod-ules, and this implementation has radically improved many of our publishing processes.

Gregory: All requests for quotes, purchase orders, and specifi cation sheets are generated from PPM.

Duane: We are using the Scheduling features, along with the Production Cockpit to track all of the key process points in the production of new products, from project approval through delivery to the warehouse. We track processes for reprints as well. Our Print Buyer overcame reservations about giving up his existing spreadsheets for tracking processes, schedules, and historical records and now he is the big-gest fan of PPM in the publishing house. Ac-quisitions Editors are likewise beginning to use Scheduling and Cockpit to track their tasks.

Gregory: And Ryan, our production manager, was completely spreadsheet-dependent on doing his production for printing orders. Now he’s completely on Production Cockpit.

Duane: Advance and royalty accruals had been done manually in the past. That happens au-tomatically now. And we were managing sub-

rights in an Access® database, so there was not really a way to track things like “when should publisher xyz in South Korea be sending us a payment for xy titles?“. PPM now gives us a very good way to track that.

Gregory: PPM has those interesting other tabs like “product“ that you can click on, and you’re able to see in the product bundle all the contracts or the subrights that have been fi led for a product. So we like all the automat-ic linkages exposing other relationships that a product has.

Could you share some of your ROI experiences with us?

Gregory: Well, that’s hard to measure. Implementing Klopotek has certainly aided in reporting, so that we can do analysis work to make better-informed decisions on what we do to enhance the market share.

Duane: Yes, informing and decision-making, that is something we can defi nitely point to. I should say that Paul Santhouse, who is our Director of Acquisitions, made a presenta-

tion to senior management at Moody Bible Institute about our strategic planning process. Paul has worked at other publishing houses, and his statement was that we have the best IT infrastructure of any organization that he’s

ever seen. And the ability that we have to ex-tract data from it and use it in decision-making processes is better than anywhere he’s seen.

Moody has just fi nished implementing Klopotek CR&R (Contracts, Rights & Royalties). What is your experience with that?

Duane: In fact, we’re still fi nishing it up. We did our 2009 royalties on CR&R, and that worked well. We really like the additional information that’s coming out on the royalty statements to authors. But we are still in the process of getting all the subrights into the system, although we’re pretty close to being ready with that as well.

What’s your opinion about the Account Navi-gator – a feature of Klopotek CR&R that pro-vides an overview of all related processes and at the same time works as a control center?

Duane: We are not at a point yet where our users are utilizing that aspect. But I can say from my perspective that it has opened up the information incredibly for us to see the history of an item. In UNISON, although it is a good

system, none of that information was avail-able. So when we look at the Account Naviga-tor, it’s exciting and amazing to see how much information is exposed and available.

“ Paul Santhouse [Director of Acquisitions] has worked at other publishing

houses, and his statement was that we have the best IT infrastructure of any organization that he’s ever seen. ” Duane Koenig

Duane Koenig, Director of Operations, points out that Klopotek’s PPM assists in strategic planning and decision-making processes, as key data can be extracted in many different ways.

“ Having worked with the system now for a couple of years I just have

to add that the functionality is so rich and so fl exible that it’s just a wonderful system. ” Gregory Miller

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Gregory: Yes, there’s a huge amount of information there. We’re still trying to catch up and understand all that it’s trying to tell us. It’s wonderful to have everything linked in front of you, showing all the relationships that a particular creditor has with us and to see all the contracts – and to be able to just jump across through all of them. And this is very im-portant, too: The more you can visualize, the more you can reduce errors and spot things which are incorrect. So being able to visual-ize all these relationships is really a signifi cant improvement to these processes.

How well organized was the project imple-mentation? How do you rate the cooperation between the Moody and Klopotek teams?

Gregory: From my experience, everybody at Klopotek is really nice to work with. And I keep them busy, too.

Duane: I would say the same thing. It’s just been a pleasure. It feels like we’re on a team together. There were points where the Klopo-tek team said “here’s the way we want to do it”, and we said “wait a minute, what about this way?”, and we made a business case, and

they said “OK, well, let’s do it that way” – so it was really a collaborative effort. Because of the situation that they were building the

interfaces to the UNISON system at the same time as implementing Klopotek for us, there was a lot of give-and-take, discussion, and

“ In UNISON, although it is a good system, none of that information was

available. So when we look at the Account Navigator, it’s exciting and amazing to see how much information is exposed and available. ”

Duane Koenig

decision-making. It has been very good. We enjoy having Klopotek as a partner.

Moody was the fi rst Global Turnkey Systems client to go on to Klopotek’s PPM, so standard interfaces and migration processes needed

to be developed and implemented. You’ve already said that the interfaces to UNISON were very important. Are you pleased with the results?

Duane: The interfaces are working well, and I hope that other Global customers are able to take advantage – that they can move to the Klopotek system for some of their needs as well.

Publishers are facing the challenge of creat-ing, preparing and storing content tailored to existing and future markets. SCHEMA ST4, licensed under the umbrella of Klopotek, uses native XML to structure assemblies and to manage text components, so documents are not created once and then archived, but are part of a life cycle process defi ned by various characteristics. Could you tell us about your plans to implement the ST4 system?

Duane: ST4 uses native XML to structure and manage text components. This is very clearly something that we need to address in-house, and our publisher is on board with this as much as anybody. Given the digital world that we’re living in, and it’s becoming more and more digital, we are going to have to address our workfl ows and how we manage our content. Certainly XML looks like the way to go. And to have a system that does that and would be linked together with the Klopotek system again starts to seem like a no-brainer. But we haven’t made a decision yet. At Moody Publishers and at Moody Bible Institute we’re right now in a strategic planning process where this kind of question is being discussed.

Duane and Gregory, thanks very much; Klopo-tek is looking forward to continue working together with Moody to fi nd solutions to the challenges imposed by the digital age.The historic Moody Bible Institute arch: MBI enrolls over 4,000 undergraduate, graduate, and distance learning

students and consists of three major ministries: education, broadcasting, and publishing.

“ The interfaces are working well, and I hope that other Global

customers are able to take advantage – that they can move to the Klopotek system for some of their needs as well. ”

Duane Koenig

Get the big picture at a glance: The Account Navigator provides a quick overview of all accounts of royalty recipients – history and current status.

Drill down to detail: The Account Navigator does not only show all the relevant relationships such as ac-counts, contracts, and products. It is also possible to jump across through all of them at the touch of a button, making it a control center. It has never been easier to reduce errors.

See the history of accounts, check out all the relationships, monitor even complex payment procedures

The Account Navigator, a new feature of Klopotek’s CR&R module, provides a smart way to monitor all accounts of royalty recipients, including the history of an item. Hierarchies are indicated by clickable tabs. You can either get a quick overview, which displays general information plus the last statements, or move into greater detail by jumping across contracts, products or sub-accounts. All data is available, and you can access it any way you want to. This is particularly helpful when handling complex accounts, e.g if an agent represents several authors or if several contracts have been made with an author.

“ The more you can visualize, the more you can reduce errors and spot

things which are incorrect. ” Gregory Miller about the Klopotek Account Navigator

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“Working with you will greatly help us accomplish what we’re beginning to dream about doing.“ Greg Thornton, Vice President of Publications, comments on new challenges and the partnership with Klopotek.

The vision of Moody Publishers is to pro-claim the gospel of Jesus Christ and a biblical worldview. In the 1960s, Moody Publishers adopted the slogan, “The Name You Can Trust“ because of strong and positive cus-tomer feedback about your integrity. As Vice President of Publications, could you tell us about your company goals and the relevance of state-of-the-art software applications to accomplish these goals in the digital age?

We are very mission-driven. We believe that God put us all on earth for a purpose. The mission of this publishing program is to help individuals worldwide understand more of God, and their own purpose in life. Moody Publishers has a special history – our founder was the evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody, who recognized the power of literature even in 1894 as a means to help people know God better, and he was a pioneer in many aspects. So we’re thankful, as we review our history, for this foundation.

But going forward, you’re exactly right that digital is bringing new opportunities as well as new challenges. In our planning sessions we’ve talked about the new reality that if we dream it now we can make it happen. I’ve never seen it this way in publishing before. And we’re only very early on in this digital revolution that is hitting publishing world-wide. We are, with other publishers,

taking a fi rst step in making sure that content, which is locked away in these print books right now, is made available to read-ers in whatever format they’d like. But we believe that this is just the fi rst step – and that none of us can imagine where all of this is going in the next fi ve to ten years.

“Our authors are changing lives – marriages, churches, families, and spiritual walks of their readers.” [Quote from www.moodypublishers.com] Moody Publishers’ profi ts are channeled back to MBI to support the tuition-paid education of more than 1,500 undergraduate students.

So it’s extremely important that we have a technology platform to build upon. Through our partnership with Global fi rst and now Klopotek, the infrastructure is laid so that it’s much easier for us to envision actually ac-complishing some of these dreams – because of the base that we’re operating from right now. We still have lots to do, but what excites all of us at Moody is the opportunity to reach

even more people with God’s truth and to serve them well. We also want to be good stewards on behalf of our authors. We are recognized as “The Name You Can Trust“, and we want to follow through on that promise in every way, which includes making our con-tent easily accessible.

Greg Thornton, Vice President of Publications, explains that effective software support is critical for a successful shift to digital distribution – chunking of content, accurate rights information and manage-ment, and new types of products.

“ Our relationship with Global/Klopotek has been extremely fruitful, and

it’s a long-standing partnership: 16 years. In publishing, that’s a long time! And we love the international aspect of your company. ”

Greg Thornton

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“Because of the data being held in the same place, Klopotek has helped the fl ow of information from department to department to go smoother.”

(Judy Tollberg)

Judy, Klopotek has been implemented for Marketing, Production, Design, and Editorial. How would you describe the most important qualities of the system in one or two words?

Centrally locating information. That is a huge thing for us, because we had a lot of data in

different places, and we wanted to pull it all together. And fl exibility is important – that we can create different types of reports from the system.

In more detail, how have interdepartmental business workfl ows been improved?

Because of the data being held in the same

place, Klopotek helps for communication and information, as we all go to the same spot to get the information from it. It’s no longer that you have to go check with one person and then check with somebody else. So it has helped the fl ow of information from depart-ment to department go smoother. This is, for

instance, important for the creation of sell sheets and catalog content.

Another example is that now, when people are putting purchase orders into the system, that information automatically fl ows into the job costing system. This is adding better com-munication to the Finance department, so they can be guaranteed that when they do fi nal

“That is a huge thing for us”: Judy Tollberg, Director of Digital Asset Management, pictured here with Jeff Reyn-olds, Finance Manager, stresses that “centrally locating information” is the most important benefi t of utilizing PPM.

“ Klopotek gives us positive feedback; they listen when we have some

ideas, and even when it might not be what they’re thinking they should do or could do, they have actually said “yes, that does make sense” – and have made some changes. It does feel like it’s one team. ”

Judy Tollberg

Making available content in chunks is be-coming an important ingredient of offering fl exible digital products. How important is software support in this area, especially in the fi eld of rights?

It is critical. Without software support those dreams couldn’t become reality. There are important rights and reporting responsi-bilities we have by agreement with authors. Having the right tools to track this informa-tion is extremely important. Where chunking of content is going to go, no one knows for sure. But we must prepare for it. For instance, we’ve talked about the 30-volume commen-tary we publish on the entire New Testament, written by a well-known pastor. We think that there may be opportunities to lift por-tions of that commentary to match sections of the Bible that people are studying, and offer it in ‘chunks’. It can easily be done. It’s an invigorating time to be in publishing.

In what ways is implementing Klopotek soft-ware part of your forward-thinking strate-gies?

On the business support side, we’ve made a mutual commitment with Klopotek to PPM. That resource is already serving us very ef-fectively, and we recognize we’re only just beginning to scratch the surface. Our edito-rial acquisitions director stood in front of a room full of senior executives at Moody and boasted about the amount of information that’s available to decision makers within our publishing house. He’s worked for a couple of other publishers and said that he’s never had access to that amount of information before. Our relationship with Global/Klopotek has been extremely fruitful, and it’s a long-stand-ing partnership: 16 years. In publishing, that’s a long time! And we love the international aspect of your company. We’ve always had a global publishing presence, but under our new president at Moody, all of the ministry areas are being asked to think more globally. Of course in publishing, the world is fl atten-ing through digital and the new opportuni-ties to deliver digital content direct to readers around the globe. We believe that working with an international company, like you are, will greatly help us to accomplish what we’re beginning to dream about doing.

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costing all the variables that make up their cost are there. It also enhances accuracy.

Along with that there is the elimination of several manual processes. In my case it used

to be, for example, necessary for me to create a tracking report – that is a tool we use to keep everybody up to speed on what titles are coming and what their status is, and any signifi cant information about them. I used to do the tracking report by hand. Now it comes out through PPM.

We have another vendor who does the ONIX feeds to some of our key customers. Right now I have to manually put that content in there – so content is being put into PPM by hand, and then it’s also being put into this other place by hand. This will soon be automated. It will be very benefi cial to have consistency, so that when a change is made in PPM it will be changed over with our other vendor as well – versus having to go through another person to make that change.

From your experience, can you comment on the reliability and comprehensiveness of the Klopotek system?

„I live in PPM and Cockpit to do my job as Produc-tion Manager.“

(Ryan Lloyd)

Ryan, could you tell us about utilizing PPM and the benefi ts it creates?

PPM Scheduling and the Production Cockpit have proven very useful. In fact, I live in PPM and Cockpit to do my job as Produc-tion Manager. It has completely eliminated Excel® spreadsheets for reprint and new release tracking. Now all of those processes and information are in the Production and Scheduling system. And in the product bundle, on the notes tab, there is a place for us to make notes for a number of things. In the production section, we log corrections needed on reprints of titles. It is very helpful to have one place to track those changes needed. Overall, the entire purchase-order process is better, once all the key specifi ca-tions are put into PPM.

No more Excel® spreadsheets and an optimized purchase-order process: Ryan Lloyd, Production Manager, names some of the key benefi ts of hav-ing implemented Klopotek PPM.

Contact Moody PublishersDuane Koenigduane.koenig@moody.edu

Contact KlopotekJai Putrevuj.putrevu@klopotek.com

Editor KlopotekDr. Stefan Kaufer

www.moodypublishers.comwww.klopotek.com

I don’t think there’s anything – a process or a window or whatever – that ever failed so that we had to ask Klopotek to go in and actually fi x data. It is a very stable system. Of course, it is an important aspect that it doesn’t blow up the data that we have. And there is no need

to store any data outside of PPM. It’s really important when working in a team that you don’t develop other silos. About the only thing that’s outside of PPM is the cover images, and we’re utilizing the relationships in PPM – the classifi cations – so that we can use automated processes to control these fi les that we have on the network. What is your opinion about the cooperation with Klopotek during the implementation project?

Klopotek gives us positive feedback; they listen when we have some ideas, and even when it might not be what they’re thinking they should do or could do, they have actually said “yes, that does make sense” – and have made some changes. So it’s been a wonderful relationship from my perspective. It does feel like it’s one team.

“ I don’t think there’s anything – a process or a window or whatever – that

ever failed so that we had to ask Klopotek to go in and actually fi x data. ”Judy Tollberg

The Moody Publishers building on the Moody Bible Institute campus. The MBI, located in the heart of Chicago, has remained at the same location chosen by D. L. Moody 120 years ago.