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A Time to Embrace
Uncertainties and Inconsistencies
Amping up the technology, tools, and resources for the longer term
By Teri Tan
T
he digital solutions industry is very much a product bookscausing many educational publishers to experience
of its time. Its end consumersespecially those who double-digit decline in sales of textbooks and reference mate-
tote mobile devices and demand information on the rials. The industry is at the precipice of a fresh round of divest-
goare the ones whose changing preferences have ments after a spate of restructuring and retrenchment exercises:
created such disruptive companies as Airbnb, McGraw-Hill has sold off its K12 business to Nelson
GoFundMe, Snapchat, and Uber. Improved tech- Education, and Pearson is now considering selling off its U.S.
nologies, newer tools, and increased efficiency have fueled the school courseware unit and its stake in Penguin Random House.
quest for more innovative ideas and faster value creation in this Adding to the uncertainties is the confusion set off by the
age of Instagram and influencer networks. current White House administration in its proposed budget and
Some of the big publishers, too, are looking at technology to stance on education (and Common Core standards), immigra-
lead the pack and bolster their bottom lines. In fact, the acquisi- tion, visas, and outsourcing, as well as federal funding for the
tion of technologyor technology-based companies, to be spe- arts, humanities, research, libraries, and education. The poten-
cifichas been a popular business strategy. Elsevier bought tial impact and rippling effects from these uncertainties has
Plum Analytics in February, barely 10 months after purchasing moved water-cooler speculation into boardrooms.
Social Science Research Network. During that period, Wiley During PWs trip to India to visit participants in this report
acquired Atypon, Cengage bought WebAssign, and McGraw- early in the year, some digital solutions vendorsand their
Hill Education took over Redbird Advanced Learning. And just main U.S. clients in some caseswere already rethinking their
within the last two months, Taylor & Francis jumped onto the business collaboration with plans of forming partnerships or
acquisition bandwagon by taking over the digital research firm joint ventures to sidestep the IT outsourcing/immigration
Colwiz while Bertelsmann Education acquired WhiteCloud issues. Some are looking into setting up branches in the U.S. to
Analytics. offer onshore and hybrid services, while a few more are checking
What is unmistakable is the high level of interest coming from out companies to take over and therefore have immediate U.S.
the big players when it comes to publishing solutions, digital representation.
learning products, research management tools, and predictive Meanwhile, the packaging of internal processes as modules
analytics. In fact, technology is such a big part of these companies and products for sale and the strengthening of data mining
that some no longer call themselves publishers. They are now capabilities to deliver better metrics and market intelligence to
purveyors of learning science, information analytics, education publishing clients have continued unabated. These digital ven-
technology, or content-enabled solutions. And they are no longer dors are now the extended arm of their publishing clients,
satisfied with outsourcing technology-based requirements to working and thinking on their behalf. Their existence, growth,
suppliers onshore or offshore the way they did in the past. They and futures are intricately interlinked with those of their
cover illustration istock shugawarrior
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E
verything is different, and yet the same. Think about gotten right, Carey says. Certainly, making print books look
Polaroid cameras, which were first replaced by digi- and feel better than they did 10 years ago is something that
cams and later smartphones for snapping instant benefits the readers, publishers, and publishers partners as we
photos. Or vinyl records, which gave way to compact work collaboratively to help create better print products.
discs and then to iTunes. Or clunky desktopsand, The plateauing e-book sales in recent months have necessi-
increasingly, laptopswhich have fallen out of favor tated innovation, especially at the content level. We are seeing
in this age of tablets and handheld devices. a demand for richer and value-added content, which is not lim-
New gadgets will appear and replace the old ones, but the ited to texts and graphics. Storytelling is becoming a completely
main purpose that these products serve remains very much the immersive experience through the use of images, videos, and
same, albeit in a much faster, often less costly, and definitely semantic tagging. AR and VR are going to be a part of that very
slicker way. This goes for the digital solutions industry as well: soon, says Uday Majithia, assistant v-p for marketing and pre-
publishers and providers are racing to find the next quicker, sales at Impelsys.
cheaper, and more seamless technology, workflow, or platform; Streamlining and automating processes to reduce manual
their shared goal invariably involves delivering quality content intervention is crucial in bringing down production lead time
to consumers. to enable shorter time to market, Majithia adds. These call for
But, as markets and consumer preferences continue to shift innovation of more evolved, smarter, and more intuitive con-
and evolve, industry players have to restrategize, reboot, rethink, tent, he says.
and rebrand their business operations, models, and objectives
again and again. (And, as the resurgence of Polaroids and vinyl
records has shown, sometimes the old stuff does fulfill certain Complementing, Not Competing,
market needs.) Formats
Many publishers have embraced a digital-first model on the
Plateauing E-book Sales assumption that the next generations of consumers will be so
Hindsight is always 20/20. Ten years ago, if you had told a tied to devices that they will access educational content, read,
room full of publishing executives that e-books were going to and be entertained only through such devices. But the market
decline and that print, and even independent bookstores, would itself is not uniform, says Vidur Bhogilal, the vice chairman of
see a resurgence in 2016, I think there would be plenty of raised Lumina Datamatics. Readers of trade books move back and
eyebrows, says Tyler Carey, the business development director forth between print and e-books. Education consumers still
of Westchester Publishing Services. spend heavily on print, and not necessarily on new editions.
But the industry, Carey points out, is adapting to the correc- Digital products in education are not standardized, and there is
tion. The renewed focus on digitalnot as the salvation of the little agreement on the ideal modes of learning. Our clients are
publishing industry but as a tool towards achieving success with not only navigating a print-vs.-digital conundrum; they are also
traditional products as well as those that have survived the seeing imports, used books, rentals, and exchanges deeply can-
emergence of new formatsis something that publishers have nibalizing traditional sales.
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Many publishers also assume that they have to offer highly are the two biggest aspects that affected our business. Aggregators,
interactive content in order to retain core users and attract new for instance, have been developing contextual search-based data-
and young consumers, adds Bhogilal. But, for most parts, bases for subject-specific researchers and helping students and
readers are not going to Hachette, Penguin, and HarperCollins researchers connect the dots between the present and past.
for gamified or highly interactive e-books on their devices. They Going digital and mobile is the right stance despite the chal-
go to these companies for great stories and information. lenges in e-book sales, says Majithia, of Impelsys. A print title
Hurix Digital CEO Subrat Mohanty says publishers are on without an e-book version will lose half of its audience today,
the right track when they take digital seriously as a business and now that people are comfortably reading e-books and other
not a cost center. Their readiness to upgrade publishing work- content on mobile devices, which are growing exponentially
flows for agility and optimization and their strategies to enable every year, he says. But there has to be a unified process and
book distribution and subscription digitally and online are holistic approachtowards authoring, editing, reviewing, and
laudable, Mohanty says. But the notion among some pub- composition, for instancein creating different deliverables. If
lishers that e-books will kill print revenues has a different side we think of print and digital as totally unrelated processes, then
to it. Digital does not compete with print; it complements it. it will be double the work, time, and cost.
E-books and print books work symbiotically to drive revenues For Mohanty, of Hurix Digital, it is essentially the book
and engage readers. reading experience that has turned publishers to digital pub-
E-books have not supplanted gaming or video or other modes lishing. While the romance of print books continues, nowadays
of entertainment and information gathering, Bhogilal says. book readers are also book listeners, and this has opened up new
Nor have they been swept away by these media, he adds. In avenues for multimedia-rich e-books, Mohanty says. And, as
education, the book is used not only to inform but also to the audience becomes global, new ways to deliver books in
develop a skill. A book can contain laboratory instructions but multiple languages is now a business need. A read-aloud feature
will never replace a laboratory. It can never replace the hands-on in different languages, for instance, is being talked about and
experience. So the question remains: are there better ways of considered. Meanwhile, HTML5 is now the de facto online
using digital techniques of teaching, learning, and experiencing content standard that ensures responsive content in any device
to accomplish these tasks? and operating platform for seamless reading experience.
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single-URL publishing work end-to-end, covering submission, Evolving U.S. legislation on accessibility and diverse state-
peer review, content revision postpeer review, proofing, and by-state standards have also created several new requirements
publishing and beyond, adds Arun. (TNQ spoke about the that publishers must meet before schools will consider pur-
transition from PDF to HTML alongside speakers from the chasing their materials. New technologies, from adaptive
Rockefeller University Press and Academy of Pediatrics at the learning platforms to data analytics tools, have transformed
recent annual meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing.) many publishing businesses into technology companies,
requiring them to provide customer service as they support and
train educators and students to use new tools, says Waseem
Innovating, Monetizing, and Andrabi, senior director of global content services at Cenveo
Protecting Content Publisher Services, adding that student demographics have
Arora, of MPS, sees a progressive trend of smart innovation in shifted in recent years, and students want engaging qualities in
enriching and harmonizing content to improve discoverability. their digital products.
The movement from document-based to asset-based workflows While industry disruption in these three areaslegislation,
is another, Arora says. Then there are digital-first workflows technology, and student demographicspresents new chal-
backed by subprocesses such as online authoring and peer lenges to publishers, it also offers new opportunities, adds
reviewing facilitated by cloud-based workflow management Andrabi, whose company published a recent report, Six Big
systems. All these trends are good for both digital solutions and Trends Reshaping K12 Education Publishing, on its
publishing industries; increased adoption of them will be even website.
better. Digital rights management is something that is working
In the STM segment, Sriram Subramanya, the CEO of Integra great for publishers, adds Vohra, of Continuum Content
Software Services, finds that the publishers are constantly chal- Solutions. DRM imposes some technological restrictions that
lenged by the need for shorter turnaround time and the cost of control what users can do with the digital media, Vohra says.
making their research content immediately available for schol- For instance, a song can be listened to, but not copied or shared;
arly consumers. This has led to simplified content layout and an e-book can be viewed only on a specific device; a single-player
editorial style guidelines, and increased automation in the game can only be played with authorized internet access; or an
workflow process, Subramanya says. There is also an apparent email that cannot be forwarded. In other words, DRM creates a
struggle in fixing the taxonomy and metadata tagging to aid defective product, which completely satisfies the copyright
content discoverability. In the near future, publishers may need protection needs.
to create compelling videos and visually attractive, self-explan-
atory articles to aid researchers who are finding it difficult to
reproduce the experiment methods and results from the journal Overcoming Fundamental
article. Outsourcing Issues
STM publishers have been historically good at monetizing Now that digital publishing has matured, publishers are not
their online products, says Arun, of TNQ. Open access has reaching out to new vendors as much. They are consolidating
opened up another business model where the author becomes existing vendors, which makes life difficult for vendors that are
the customer, which brings in additional challenges that force trying to expand and add new clients. Margins are slimmer than
publishers to rethink the way their products and services are ever, and quality and turnaround time have become the key
delivered, he says. differentiators between vendors, says Indira Rajan, the CEO of
Articles in the Expert Series, penned by invited vendors, examine critical topics impacting both the publishing and digital
solutions industries:
Can Technology Change the Way Children Learn? by Aditya P. Tripathi, founder and CEO of OKS Education/MarkSharks
Math Production Made Easy by A.R.M. Gopinath, executive v-p at DiacriTech
Tracking the Shifts in the Newspaper and Magazine Industry by Amit Vohra, CEO of Continuum Content Solutions
Visit publishersweekly.com/digitalsolutions2017 to read the full report and additional online articles.
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Lapiz Digital Services. review, editing, art and design, permissions, production, XML
But, with new products released annually, the demand for transformation, metadata management, and image validation,
new skills and implementation of new (or different) technolo- for instanceare daunting. Adds Andrabi: Publishers under-
gies often comes into play. Selected vendors are often not at stand that to remain competitive with user expectations, speed
liberty to turn away such new projects, and have to put in their to market is critical. But balancing the need for speed with
bids. What happens then is vendors losing focus on their exper- editorial validity and accuracy is becoming more important
tise and putting in tremendous effort in building something with each passing day.
new. For instance, editorial houses may end up bidding for Understandably, publishers are having difficulties coping
digital services when their resources are editors who have little with market shifts and consumer demands. The tendency to
understanding about a digital product, adds Rajan. In such change content at the final stages of the product puts unreal-
cases, publishers will stand to gain so much morein terms of istic pressure on vendors, says Khanna, of OKS Group, adding
expertise, turnaround time, and costsif only they segmentize that many in the publishing industry have not fully grasped
their vendors according to core expertise. But, since this has not the complexities and resulting developmental costs from the
been carried out properly, we are seeing a slower-than-expected migration to digital publishing. Higher expectations and
shift to digital products for the industry. increased demands for solutions will come with higher costs
Price pressures and services perceived as commodities con- and that is normal.
tinue to drive the publishing industry. Search engines have Now, lets take a closer look at 16 companies (in reverse alpha-
given users, theoretically, the ability to find the information betical order) to learn more about their strategies to meet the
they think they need, says Andrabi, of Cenveo Publisher above challenges while fulfilling market expectations and
Services. Many nonscholarly publishers, particularly newspa- demands. This reviewwhich covers randomly selected com-
pers, have published content for anyone to readin the misbe- panies with different strengths, and does not imply our endorse-
gotten hope of selling more online advertising. But publishing mentis meant to help you in your search for the most suitable
is a complex process, with many of its functions unknown to the partner or partners for your digital publishing initiatives. As
average scholar or reader. always, know what your company really needs and do your due
The obvious costs of publishingcontent creation, peer diligence.
Westchester Publishing Services so-called India Direct Full Service accountswhile branching
The expansion at Westchesters Chennai production facility in into new areas such as editorial and design services for trade
the past year was due to more projects from major trade houses, houses.
university pressesincluding Harvard University Press and Westchesters acquisition of Kinetic Publishing Services last
MIT Pressand SSTM publishers, says business development October, adds Carey, is positioned to help fulfill stateside design
director Tyler Carey, who has hired more LaTeX specialists to and production demands. We have also launched a new division
work directly with clients to roll out LaTeX templates. Our for the K12 educational market. To support such expansion, we
New Delhi team has also expanded with more key clientsour have hired industry veterans Tim Cross, formerly of the Council
of Science Editors and Allen Press, and Kevin Gray, previously
with Cenveo Publisher Services and MPS, to join our executive
team. Marie Brown, founder of Brown Publishing Network, has
also joined us as editorial project director.
Meanwhile, the companys cloud-based Client Portal, which
is overseen by technology director Michael Jensen, is now up and
running, allowing clients to have better transparency on each
step of their projects so that they can have greater confidence in
our services and better access to their projects, says Carey. He
adds that he sees technology such as Client Portal as a tool to
facilitate production workflow. We have automated every aspect
of the production workflow that can be scriptedbut not those
elements that would make a difference between high-quality
production assets and marginally acceptable assets.
Westchesters key differentiator is that its emphasis is on
Tyler Carey, business development director at Westchester Publishing quality products that our clients focus on: print, consumer
Services digital products, and XML, Carey says. We are cautious in
8 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY J U LY 3 , 2 0 1 7
One-stOp partner for
your publishing solutions
p u b l i s h i n g
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D i g i t a L
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p l a t f o r m
s e r v i c e s
contact@lapizdigital.com +1 210-247-9153 : US
www.lapizdigital.com +44 (0)2070 780360 : UK
Digital Solutions in India 2017
investing too much effort in tools that often fall short, such as director Yakov Chandy in London to strengthen its business
XML round-tripping for complex titles. Such tools, especially development and relationship management. Back in India, the
at this stage of software development, tend to have fragmented one-year-old Coimbatore production facility does not just pro-
adoption that rarely addresses the whole swath of a publishers vide business continuity to our clients, but allows us to harness
needs. We see ourselves as offering more reliable and versatile the abundant talent pool available there, says Arun, who is also
solutions instead of resorting to one-size-fits-all technology focused on expanding the companys business relationships with
products that may not be the answer to different project types various Indian institutions.
and publisher demands. As for the annual lecture series that TNQ cosponsors with
Cell Press, the Inspiring Science Award for the best published
life sciences paper from India was very well received, and is set
TNQ to become a standard feature in future editions of the series.
TNQ has launched the HTML-authoring platform AuthorCafe
and Proof Central 3.0 in the past few months. Proof Central is
now a complete freestyle editor with its functionality extended Quick Sort India
significantly, including the insertion of references and cita- Last October, Quick Sort India established a U.S. office in Boca
tions, says CEO Abhigyan Arun, adding that it remains the Raton, Florida, and launched its cloud-based HTML5-authoring
only proofing product in the market to seamlessly work across and -publishing workflow, QuickFlow. Different QuickFlow
multiple vendors of a publishing client and maintain full XML modules are aimed at content creation, peer review, develop-
integrity with its interface. mental editing, copyediting, indexing, galley proof generation,
While on-the-fly browser-based pagination remains elusive and deliverables. It also features automated issue collation and
to the rest of the market, Page Central is drawing even more version control, says v-p for sales John Lavender, adding that
adopters. Two-column typesetting with complex styles are QuickFlow is a complete one-system production process that
now handled with much improved accuracy, says chief scien- enables seamless collaboration between authors, reviewers, and
tist S.K. Venkatesan. With Page Central, typesetting can be production staff.
done only once after proofing, and not before and many times QuickFlow offers features such as built-in tools for autocom-
over as it is done now. It has enormous potential beyond our position, indexing, and generating tables of contents; auto-
production, and we are exploring these opportunities and mated built-in reference builder; article-by-article and issue-
expecting to make some major announcements later this year. based collation; and restricted production tracking for quick
One major TNQ client is already expanding its adoption of decision-making, allocation, reallocation, and monitoring of
Page Central, and another is likely to implement it within the
next the few months.
Recent years have seen TNQs technology services extensively
adopted by the Sheridan Group, for which the team has created
a dedicated offshore development center. Sheridan continues
to push our products and services in the U.S. market, and, now
that it has been acquired by Bang Printing, we also have an
opportunity to service its book segment, adds Arun, who has
found a new customer in
Hindawi, one of the top
three open access pub-
lishers in the world.
TNQ is also investing
heavily in an efficient
LaTeX workflow, which
has been adopted by
some of its key clients.
Operationswise, its
European office has
expanded, with Gary
Scott (v-p for products)
and Sunil Nasit (director
of business develop- The Quick Sort management team with president A.R. Nallathambi (l.) and
Abhigyan Arun, CEO of TNQ ment) joining managing chairman and managing director Venkatesh Kumar (center, in white)
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Newgen KnowledgeWorks tion through predefined review forms, email messages, and
The expanded version of MyOwnBook, Newgens workflow notifications. Furthermore, the platforms Word-based copy-
management portal, was launched last year. It further simpli- editing framework is linked with the clients composition
fies the management of books and authors, and is a viable solu- engine, which helped in expediting the production process
tion for all book typesfrom simple to complexby a single through an XML-first workflow.
author or multiple contributors, says Tej P.S. Sood, executive The peer review management systems module in JAWS
v-p for global business development and strategic partnerships, Evolve competes well with the likes of the Aries Systems
adding that the portals detailed dashboard schedules and moni- Editorial Manager and ScholarOne, says Sood. The module
tors each milestone between manuscript and publication so that integrates seamlessly with the production system of a company,
everyone working on a particular project is informed and in big or small, he adds.
sync. The dashboards also keep the production work cycle on On the other hand, sister
track, and these can be programmed to send out alerts with key company Newgen Digital
dates or information. Its JAWS Evolve solution has also seen Works offers customized
more advanced and feature-rich releases in the past year. A digital marketing solutions
journal-publishing platform that integrates article submission, for publishers, as well as
peer review, and production processes, JAWS Evolve was, for bespoke web-based applica-
instance, deployed when a midsize publishing company in the tions for various publishing
social sciences required an end-to-end publishing solution. It processes. The idea is to
enables a publisher to manage the entire journal production m a k e t h e p u b l i s h e r s
workflow, including third-party aggregator portals, explains internal processes more lean
Sood. and mean, adds Sood. We Tej P.S. Sood, executive v-p for
JAWS Evolve, Sood adds, allows immediate interaction are not moving away from global business development and
between authors, editors and reviewers during manuscript providing services to clients, strategic partnerships at Newgen
development and review stages. It streamlines the communica- but technology is now KnowledgeWorks
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playing a much bigger role in our business model. In the past, with an independent European academic publisherwhich has
we used technology primarily to serve our clients faster, quicker, over 1,300 journals and numerous digital productsto imple-
and more cost effectively. Today, we are licensing our technology ment MPSTrak as their production tracking and management
solutions, such as JAWS Evolve and MyOwnBook, as platforms system; and this is now in the process of being rolled out across
or products, and use these internally for projects as well. a larger portfolio there, adds Arora, whose team has imple-
mented ScholarStor, a component from its DigiCore publishing
platform, for a U.K.-based provider of nursing and health infor-
MPS mation solutions.
In January, MPS announced its partnership with the French Both MPSTrak and DigiCore have been continually enhanced
company Gutenberg Technology, which develops and provides and improved over the years. Ad hoc reporting, notification, and
online and mobile technology solutions for publishers. The reminders have been added
move, says CEO Rahul Arora, allows clients from both com- to MPSTrak, which now
panies to create, modularize, and publish interactive courses at integrates with RightsLink
an industrial levelnot just on tablets and smartphones but system and enhanced APIs
also in print and on the web. As a preferred technology partner, to expose workflow actions.
MPS now has access to Gutenbergs MyEContentFactory 7.0, a Reports can now be gener-
cloud-based SaaS solution that facilitates simultaneous print atedwithout restric-
and digital deliverables. The acquisition of Utah-based Think tionsby selecting the
Subscription, which provides subscription management and output parameters dynami-
fulfillment solutions, was finalized recently. cally while automatic
The team has also substantially revamped MPSTrak, the reminders can be set up for
companys cloud-based management workflow platform, to any user at journal, issue, or
improve its stability and performance when handling enhanced article level during the pro-
user loads. We have successfully completed a proof of concept duction process. What we Rahul Arora, CEO of MPS
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can capture, we can report, says Arora, pointing out that this benefits derived from the integrated solutions are multifold.
gives publishers a much greater flexibility in reporting. Through development from the ground up, customization of
Meanwhile, DigiComp, an automated component within solutions, or enhancement of existing solutions, the team is now
DigiCore, now supports InDesign Server and HTML/CSS for capable of handling the entire range of software requirements
server-based composition workflow. Its rules engine has been for publishers. We have added new skills to our resource base
significantly upgraded to increase accuracy of automated page to serve the publishing space, as well as borrowing from our
proof generation and automated validation of generated PDF group companies that are into pure-play software development,
proofs with exception-based routing. Bhogilal says, adding that while there are many software devel-
And MPS ScholarlyStats, which provides libraries and insti- opment companies across the globe, they lack industry-specific
tutions with powerful content usage analytics, now supports the knowledge to help publishers. For Lumina Datamatics, we have
Sushi plug-in for third-party integration and single sign-on both industry expertise and software skills, and so we are step-
while offering Counter 4compliant reports. The clear analytics, ping in as a one-stop solution provider.
Arora says, will point out focus areas for more ROI and better Increasing the value that the company offers to clients is the
e-resources utilization, making it an indispensable tool to help goal, says Bhogilal, and this is made possible through new
librarians make data-driven decisions and save time and money. partnership formation and continuous solutions development.
Several new large-scale projects with major publisherssigned
or currently in discussionprove that we are on the right direc-
Lumina Datamatics tion for sustainable future growth.
Providing and enhancing production-based solutions has always
been central to the growth of Lumina Datamatics. For instance,
CAPS (Content Authoring Publishing System) now has new Lapiz Digital Services
modules to handle both journal and book workflows. CAPS There is a trend toward content creation and a huge requirement
also has industry-specific features to make it usable by different for writing content for websites, says CEO Indira Rajan. Recent
verticals such as legal publishing, says vice chairman Vidur months have seen our team writing abstracts, white papers, and
Bhogilal, adding that MarketWatch, a price-intelligence solu- various articles to enhance our clients digital presence.
tion that monitors price, inventory, and promotions, is now On the other hand, Flash-to-HTML conversion projects,
gaining traction with publishers as well. which have been a specialty at Lapiz in recent months, are
Expansion into nonproduction areas in order to offer the full slowing down. But content services are picking up, and pub-
publishing value chain is driving the company forward. We lishers are busy updating their web-based contents to make
have formed partnerships that will support us in servicing clients them HTML5-compliant, adds president V. Bharathram.
in areas such as human resource management, marketing, and Flash-based e-courses are getting re-evaluated, with activities
sales, explains Bhogilal. One such partnership is with Germany- converted to HTML5. Our clients have been revising course-
based Readbox, a sales and marketing company that distributes wares to suit the latest e-learning principles, and we are busy
and promotes books. It is about leveraging our strengths: with content rewriting, instructional designing, and item
Lumina Datamatics will take Readbox solutions to our existing generation.
clients while we approach their customers with our production In the childrens book segment, Lapiz is seeing more transla-
solutions. tions. Publishers are looking to translate e-books into European
Another partnership pro- and Indian languages, and so we have been doing a lot more
d u c e s H a n d y Tr a i n , a e-books in languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, and Indic, says
mobile-based training plat- Bharathram.
form that enables users to Last year, the Lapiz team developed a Moodle-based CMS with
take up training sessions at various e-tools specifically targeted at publishers who are looking
their convenience. It offers to leverageand further monetizetheir print content. We
cloud-based modules and are now selling this Moodle-based CMS to small and midsize
the ability to track learning publishers, and editing and rewriting their content to suit online
ability and learner progress versions prior to uploading to their CMS, Rajan says.
with built-in analytics, Its completely automated quality control/quality assurance
adds Bhogilal, whose team tool for auditing other vendors projects is now foolproof, says
is busy exploring ways to Bharathram, whose team is now selling this tool as a product to
integrate products such other publishers. One of the biggest challenges with projects
a s H a n d y Tr a i n a n d coming from other vendors is the lack of file consistency. Each
Vidur Bhogilal, vice-chairman at MarketWatch into partner vendor has their own production workflow, and, at times, client
Lumina Datamatics solutions so that the overall specifications are not followed. This is where clients turn to us
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for QC/QA tests to ensure that all output is compatible with Subramanya. The Pune team, made up of German-language
their specifications in order to make a perfect archive. Our tool specialists, handles projects in the academic and STM segments.
has now been tested on various inputs and is fully tweaked to Our latest facility, in Bangalore, is dedicated to providing
handle all and any input inconsistencies. content services for one multinational educational publisher,
Meanwhile, a new Tiruchirappali facility is now open, and the and will support upstream services in content creation and
100-plus personnel there will be focused on content services assessment writing for other publishing clients.
such as copyediting, instructional design, and course authoring Both the Pune and Bangalore centers, he adds, are purposely
and development, Rajan says. This is in line with the demand created to accommodate specific client needs. We planned these
and inquiries that we are seeing from publishing clients. scalable centers to closely work with our clients and help create
successful content while meeting their newer, nicher needs.
Meanwhile, Integras digital
Integra Software Services and e-learning services center
There has been significant expansion at onshore and offshore is now a 120-strong team that
facilities at Integra. Its Illinois office now has a vice president to offers content and support in
oversee key strategic accounts, as well as more senior managers accessibility, VR, AR, MR,
to handle project management and editorial development func- platform services, QA/testing,
tions. Servicewise, the U.S. team has added assessment writing video production, and mobile
and customized content for school and ELT segment to its port- learning services. Integra is
folio, says managing director and CEO Sriram Subramanya, focused on emerging work-
whose company also operates out of Middlesex in the U.K. and flow requirements such as
Yokohama in Japan. Our strong offshore digital capabilities digital-first, digital-only, and
and onshore content services is an attractive mix for the school/ mobile-first solutions to aug-
ELT segment, which is becoming one of our focus areas. ment client requirements,
In India, its Pune center, for instance, is focused exclusively adds Subramanya, reiterating
on project management for European customers, and has the his emphasis on R&D and Sriram Subramanya, managing
capabilities to handle production and content creation, and will technology to enable these director and CEO of Integra
be expanded to service clients from other regions soon, says solutions, integrate onshore/ Software Services
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 15
Digital Solutions in India 2017
offshore workflows, and managing digital assets as a part of the downloaded content is consumed.
workflow solutions that we provide. His cloud-based authoring There are also more add-ons to support enterprise content
platform, iAuthor, for instance, enables seamless collaboration and learning delivery initiatives. Through our past collabora-
among relevant stakeholders while delivering various print and tions with content creators and learning providers, we have a
digital products for multiple channels. better understanding of organizing and delivering online
We are also looking at encouraging startups in the education learning to support enterprise-grade professional development
technology space, nourishing talent, and transferring the benefits initiatives. We are now offering some of iPublishCentrals
of our experience and expertise to our core clientele in the edu- essential platform features as stand-alone SaaS-based solu-
cational segment, says Subramanya, whose company won the tions, adds Majithia.
silver award in Training magazines Learning Design Challenge These micro-services cover on-demand analytics (from
(mobile category) for its Human Anatomy app. (Integra is also iPublishCentral Insights), cataloguing record services for
a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and was recently recognized libraries (EZ MARC), online/offline reader capabilities (iPub-
as one of the best 100 companies for women in India.) lishCentral Reader), and a content production workflow and
automation suite (iPublishCentral Gears). The need of the hour
in the publishing industry is tailor-made technology services
Impelsys and operational efficiency solutions that can be seamlessly inte-
New features in iPublishCentral 8.0, Impelsyss flagship con- grated into the publishers existing digital infrastructure. This
tent delivery platform, is making it better than ever. The is where our microservices come in, Majithia adds. Essentially,
Reader applications can now render journal content, and we are we are now reconstructing the iPublishCentral platform as an
implementing additional journal-specific features at the portal open-architecture solution whereby individual features can be
level in a phased manner, says Uday Majithia, assistant v-p for offered as cloud-based microservices to help publishers optimize
marketing and presales. The Reader, he adds, can now impart their production workflow.
comprehensive analytics on user behavior in offline mode, pro- Impelsyss courseware development services have also expanded
viding publishers with an in-depth understanding of how greatly in the past year. The team has just completed a profes-
16 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y J U L Y 3 , 2 0 1 7
Digital Solutions in India 2017
Hurix Digital
The realignment of Hurix Digital into two distinct units
Education and Publishing (led by division president Srikanth
Subramanian) and Enterprise Solutions (under CEO Subrat
Mohanty)is a natural progression for a company that has been
working with major educational publishers and global organiza-
tions for the past 16
years.
The enterprise divi-
sion will focus on pro-
viding digital content
and mobile solutions
with its flagship product,
Kitaboo, serving as an
interactive e-book plat-
form for academic pub-
lishers, schools, and
institutions. We have
continued to upgrade
Kitaboo: the reader now
Srikanth Subramanian, president of supports reflowable ePub
Hurix Education and Publishing with functions such as
W W W . P U B L I S H E R S W E E K LY. C O M 17
Digital Solutions in India 2017
18 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y J U L Y 3 , 2 0 1 7
Digital Solutions in India 2017
20 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y J U L Y 3 , 2 0 1 7
Digital Solutions in India 2017
Time to
monetize
yyour assets
Meanwhile, its Publishers Office and Design Studio continue to provide editorial,
production, and design solutions to scholarly and academic publishers, with a focus
on editorial quality. We recognize that setting the bar for turnaround times is still
JOBZONE_HALF_V.qxp_Layout 1 2/17/17 6:26 PM Page 1 important for our customers, but not at the cost of sacrificing excellence in editorial
services, says Calilhanna.
JOBZONE_HALF_V.qxp_Layout 1 2/17/17 6:26 PM Page 1
Aaltech Group
The Best
IT has always been the core expertise at the decade-old Aaltech Group. We are now
focused on providing end-to-end ERP solutions such as large-scale public projects
Opportunities
involving digitization of museums and universities, and nationwide IT training pro-
The Best grams, says director P. Shivaalkar, whose company recently provided all enterprise
in the
Opportunities
resource planning solutions to a wholesale clothing manufacturer that has 26 factories,
300 production lines, and 50,000 workers, and produces an average of seven million
in the
Business
Taking advantage of the technology is the key to maintaining Aaltechs competitive
advantage, adds Shivaalkar. We have capitalized on our IT expertise and publishing
Publishing experience in order to move into governmental projectshere in the Indian subconti-
nent and beyond, he says. We are now working on a core solution for a banking group
Business and about to start on an e-payment solution for one Indian state government. We are
diversifying into different verticals that allow us to leverage our core expertise.
Aaltech has also been busy expanding its services and clientele beyond Europe and
JOB
the U.S. Our marketing and business development teams started to look at the Middle
East market only about six months ago, and we are already working with one of the
ZONE
largest services providers in Saudi Arabia, says Thiru Baskaran, Aaltechs Chennai-
JOB
based v-p for business development, who also has an office in New Zealand.
The team is focused on making sure that clients reap the benefits of digitization and
ZONE
new media. Communicating the need for the shift from print to digital is crucial.
Publishers also need to understand the values of going digital wherever the opportunity
Leading Industry Resource. arises: advertising their digital content in their print publications, having advertise-
Reach Qualified Professionals. ment space in their websites, creating value-added articles in their blogs, and putting
content-related videos in their YouTube channel, for instance, explains Baskaran. The
New Listings Every Day.
Leading Industry Resource.
plan to digitize the print editionor having supplementary digital contentmust
be communicated early, often, and focused on the benefits to the consumers or readers.
Reach Qualified Professionals. This should be the main goal for a winning digital strategy.
New Listings Every Day. Adds Shivaalkar: We understand the need for digital transformation as well as the
importance of each content format. We are here to blend and create alternative revenue
modules for publishers based on their existing and old content.
(From l.)
Thiru Baskaran,
Richard
Publishersweekly.com/JOBZONE Athisayaraj, and
P. Shivaalkar of
Aaltech Group
Publishersweekly.com/JOBZONE
22 P U B L I S H E R S W E E K L Y J U L Y 3 , 2 0 1 7
www.tnq.co.in
integration errors
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An intuitive cloud-based proofing
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To know more, contact Yakov Chandy - yakov@tnqtech.com l +447818253293
SOLUTIONS FOR PUBLISHERS
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