Tags Strategy, Growth, Innovation

The way we work tomorrow

If you’re considering a new IT approach for your business in the future, make sure you do your homework now, says Scott Scott, IT manager of The Book People. By Paul Gander.

Like the paperless office, the demise of the book is one of those future scenarios that was widely-prophesied a few years ago on the strength of IT and internet expansion, but hasn’t exactly come about as predicted.

Instead, some of the more heartening e-commerce success stories are those which, like Amazon.com, ride on the back of continuing public hunger for the humble book. Another company to have hewn out a niche for itself in online book sales, though on a more modest scale than Amazon, is The Book People.

In fact, this UK-based £80m-turnover company sells through a number of different channels: direct sales at the workplace, catalogues and mail order with call centre support, and increasingly through its website. Its focus is clear: discount sales of a few hundred best-sellers at any one time, principally in the areas of reference, children’s and special interest books.

Over the past five years, The Book People has enjoyed a steady migration of its traditional customers to the company’s online channel, which is great news according to IT manager Scott Scott.

As a fast-growing enterprise, The Book People has been taking a hard look at its short and longer-term needs. First, it aims to maximise the potential of this important Web-based sales segment. But in addition, it wants to optimise communications and collaboration between its four different sites. As Scott explains, the first of these objectives has already been addressed through a completely redesigned website, and the second is also likely to find an IT-based solution.

“We’ve had a website since 1997,” he says, “but two years ago, we decided to get serious about it. The platform we were using wasn’t big enough or stable enough to take us forward.” Having worked with IBM in the past, the company chose to use WebSphere Commerce These were perhaps the easiest steps in The Book People’s future-planning process. More challenging was the question of gauging the scope and probable cost of the project.

Initially, says Scott, this began as an internal consultation exercise: “You really have to do your homework and detail out your requirements. We used brainstorming sessions and worked out an internal specification. You have to understand exactly what you want before you go to a specific business partner. If you don’t have that initial grasp of the company’s needs yourself, it can end up being bad for both parties.” Without this level of understanding, IT managers are largely at the mercy of the business partner’s sales team, and can themselves end up selling an over-specified solution internally.

The next stage, the application study, should ideally be carried out with each shortlisted partner, according to The Book People. As business process mapping, this step should provide a more thorough examination of system requirements and costs. It should provide firm evidence of whether, on that basis, the project should go forward or not. In Scott’s experience, an application study with a single partner can take around three weeks: time that is very well spent, he argues. Overall, the development of the new website, by IBM business partner Morpheus, took seven months. The company was happy with this turnaround time. As Scott says: “These things often take much longer.”

The new site architecture meant that Morpheus was able to build in different customer loyalty components, from a points system (redeemable against free gifts) to a separate category and website area for the best customers: “We created the concept of the VIP, based on individuals placing so many orders per year,” Scott explains. Apart from their own section of the website, VIPs enjoy faster delivery times and exclusive product offers.

In addition, the new site can also be used as a vehicle for fast, targeted campaigns. If a new high-profile product such as a celebrity sports biography is released, the wording for a special offer can be agreed and sent out, for example, to anyone who has bought sports books over the previous three months – “In two hours, you could have a targeted marketing campaign that reaches 30,000 customers,” says Scott.

The new site has also shifted the product information management process to two data systems rather than the previous three. But as Scott points out, it was the future potential of the technology involved that also attracted the company. While the existing content management process suits The Book People’s current needs, Scott is looking forward to the greater options that the next version of WebSphere Commerce will offer.

In fact, the IT-based options open to the company go well beyond the internal and external strengths of the new website. The second area earmarked for longer-term improvement is that of communication and collaboration over The Book People’s four geographical locations. “We want to introduce the idea of collaborative workspaces,” says Scott. The common architecture shared by the website and this type of network would probably favour use of the same portal, possibly something like IBM’s WebSphere, though he points out that this route is only one of several open to the company in the years to come. Joanna Read, marketing director at Morpheus, points out that, apart from overhead reductions when managing areas such as logistics and stock control, a portal such as WebSphere can also be used to store technical libraries for companies with engineering staff, as well as training materials for the workforce.

As portal and workplace sales leader for the IBM software group, Martin Smith adds that there are recent developments in software that can also help in the business-to-consumer environment. These include secure environments for team collaboration and instant messaging – which, according to Smith, “really enhances customer relations and the whole website experience.”

Of course, The Book People has taken its decisions about current needs and will no doubt make its own objective assessments for the future. But the company exemplifies the way in which the outward and inward-looking aspects of growth need no longer be considered as completely separate entities.

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