"Pearson: Intelligently Managing Content"

Pearson has been present in India for over two decades. During this time the company grew from a small trade publisher represented by Penguin India. In the late-90s, when Addison-Wesley first started its publishing operations, closely followed by Dorling Kindersley to its current avatar today as the largest consolidated learning solutions company in this region, represented by world-renowned brands such as Penguin, Pearson Education, The Financial Times, Dorling Kindersley, and many others.

With the growth came scale, and the need for a sophisticated ERP arose to manage finances in a secure, intelligent, and a scalable way as the businesses grew, says Anindo Dey, vice president and chief technical officer, Pearson India. Bookmaster, an ERP developed by TMS (later purchased by IBS, a Swedish company) that has its development roots in supporting financial systems in the publishing world specifically was set up. The installation of the ERP gave brilliant impetus to the businesses, due to the resolution of the complexity of reporting across multiple geographies for a large and diverse product list, a feature common to many.

Engaging with the World

However while Bookmaster formed the core part of the financial automation for the businesses, the need arose in the education division to capture customer data via shipping complimentary samples of published titles, a considerable cost to the company ,but with no way of mapping its success. A CRM application was needed that would track these samples in their long journey, from receiving the sample request to final delivery to a college professor, and the subsequent adoption of the said title in a course. CAMP (Comping and Adoption Module) was custom developed as the primary CRM tool was to aid the sales force in sampling, and sales reporting. It also became a tool to manage remote sales personnel ,and track their daily sales reporting. When it was developed, it was a pioneering application in the market, and has been replicated by many other publishers.

The CRM and the ERP provided the backbone of the technology needs of the businesses in the early days but true success can be experienced through maximum automation, consolidation, standardization, and scalability across all businesses, says Dey. Technology consolidation became a real operational success when the Indian businesses merged into one single triangulated network in 2008, with built in redundancies (fail-over) that truly stabilized the operations. This redesign enabled Pearson to implement better distributed ,and hosted applications with superior data security, and disaster-recovery practices. The network also enabled Pearson India to better link with the Pearson world to carry intellectual Property, increasingly digitized, seamlessly, and securely. This enabled the company to publish titles, in theory, across the world. A Phillip Kotler book, for example, could be published nearly at the same time (contracts permitting) in US, UK ,and India. The network became a powerful tool in establishing the Pearson India businesses on the global map, says Dey.

The past few years witnessed a surge in online sales in India and in response, Pearson companies partnered with online retailers to sell books online. To enable these e-tailers to display maximum details about the books, book information, including cover design etc, was sent directly from the ERP to be consolidated in the CRM (CAMP) to delivery to the e-tailers via EDI feeds. This cut down valuable development time at the e-tailers end, and shortened the time-to-market for products.

The key to making content available in all forms is to manage it intelligently,not just in storing it, but also in creating, converting, and delivering it. Pearson has arguably been successful in doing so, and the success has come by the way of managing the processes through greater use of technology, and automation across all aspects of the business and thats for many to follow!

Drishti D Manoah
drishtim@cybermedia.co.in