From Nothing to TMM

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From Nothing to TMM

• Or, how Northwestern University Press decided to
  invest in a press-wide database and why we chose
  the one we did

Donna Shear June 15, 2007 AAUP Annual Meeting
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From Nothing to TMMA Little Background History
As late as 2002, NU Press used the following for
its information sharing
Systems

• A small server on which we placed transmittal
  forms (Word Documents), production costing sheets
  (Excel Documents), media names and addresses
  (FileMaker)
• Most Press employees could also access CDC
  fulfillment system for current title information
  (e.g., inventory on particular titles, sales on
  individual titles, etc.)

Sales Department Tools

• Sales department created spreadsheets to satisfy
  requirements of various electronic trading
  partners (e.g., amazon, Baker and Taylor) or
  handwritten buy sheets (e.g., Barnes and Noble)
• Sell sheets were done as Word documents

• Website was static
• If a price or publication date changed, needed to
  be done manually
• Difficult to update website to take advantage of
  seasons/sales, etc.

Website
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From Nothing to TMMWhat We Felt We Needed

• A central place to put all data that everyone at
  the Press needed to share
• Author, title, authors address and other vital
  information
• Publication date
• Key bibliographic information such as price, trim
  size, binding
• A simpler way to keep our web site active and
  up-to-date
• Help with transmittal of new information to
  trading partners, as well as any updates

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From Nothing to TMMWhat We Felt We Needed

• Less important, but nice to have
• Production schedule
• Publicity contact management system
• Contracts tickler system

a
b
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From Nothing to TMMMaking the Choice

• Would feed our web site
• Robust system we could add to as we got more
  sophisticated
• Assurance of continued technical support (a
  concern if we were to go with another university
  presss home-grown system)
• Eloquence

The primary reasons we chose TMM (Quality
Solutions) were
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What is eloquence?
ONIX
Barnes Noble (ONIX) Amazon (Amazon
ONIX) Bowker (ONIX Amazon) Ingram
(ONIX) Borders (Amazon) Baker Taylor (ONIX) B
T Distribution (xls) B N Distribution
(xls) Muse (ONIX) Yahoo Books (ONIX) Books-a-Milli
on (ONIX) Childrens Literature (Amazon) Google
(ONIX) Library of Congress (ONIX) Powells (Amazon
ONIX) Andersen Merchandise (832) Follett (832
xls) Northshire Bookstore (xls) Hastings
(Custom) Many Others (Custom xls)
Excel
EDI 832
Amazon
Many others
Custom
This slide courtesy of QSI.
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From Nothing to TMMThe Reality

• It turned out to be very difficult to pour the
  CDC data into TMM, although eventually we got it
  ironed out bad data doesnt suddenly become good
  because youve got a new system
• Other content that was less than pristine had
  tons of glitches
• Hired two interns for entire summer to input data
  that wasnt able to flow in from CDC or Excel
  spreadsheets

Data-Entry Challenges Difficult and
Time-Consuming
Publicity Model Had Limitations

• Outputting media mailing labels was challenging
  for a number of tiny but annoying reasons (e.g.,
  zip codes that began in 0 were challenging
  foreign addresses were challenging)
• No easy contact-management system
• Automatic cascading of dates didnt allow for
  easy tweaking
• Existing system was easily understandable, so
  switching seemed
• unnecessary by some departments

Production Model Met with Resistance
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From Nothing to TMMSome Recent Developments

• Moved from seat-based system to server-based
• Can now access remotely
• Number of users not limited
• Migrated our web site from university server to
  QSI server
• CDC offered a modified version of TMM to all its
  distribution clients this change means that all
  our TMM data flows to CDC and then out to trading
  partners
• Eventually abandoned publicity module for Act One
  contact management system

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CDC Model
All other CDC Client presses
UC Press Distribution Clients
UMN Press
Stanford
NWU Press TMM
TMMWeb
TMMWeb
IKE
CDC TMM
UC Press TMM
QSI-QSI Feed
SIU Press TMM
Nightly Feed File
CIS PUB
Island Press TMM
Biblio Vault
This slide courtesy of QSI.
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From Nothing to TMMThe Challenges

• Must determine who is responsible for entering
  and/or updating information and at what point in
  the process
• Must be fastidious in keeping TMM data up-to-date
  and accurate
• While flow of data to CDC eliminates double
  entry, it also has met with some serious
  glitches (our system is mapped slightly
  differently)

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From Nothing to TMMWho Does What?

• TMMor any press-wide databaseis only as good as
  the data that is entered
• Departmental responsibilities were determined,
  but must be constantly revisited
• Heres how we chose to do it

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From Nothing to TMMDepartment Responsibilities
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From Nothing to TMMDepartment Responsibilities
(Contd)
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From Nothing to TMMFuture

• We would like to make use of other aspects of TMM
  such as the contracts module and the production
  module
• Whats holding us up?
• Contracts module means manually inputting data
  from 2,000 contracts task was started, but not
  completed
• Production module we have been very happy with
  our Excel and FileMaker production schedules so
  we are less than motivated to transfer data over
  also, it is tricky to print reports from TMM and
  we require the production schedule printed out
  each week

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From Nothing to TMMQuestions?

• Any questions?