Klopotek Welcome and State of the Company - Uli Klopotek
Klopotek User Group Meeting October 23-24 Parsippany
The 2nd annual joint Klopotek/GTS users group meeting was held in Parsippany, NJ October 23 and 24. This year’s meeting ran pretty much the same as last years; time for closed door sessions between the users, state of the company address by Klopotek, new developments and small group discussion on areas of interest. There was a larger number of Klopotek users in the meeting this year, about half of the registrants were Klopotek users. A majority of them using the CRR (Contract, Rights and Royalties System), there were no other companies current close to adopting or using the BSD system that F.A Davis uses. There was a new company that has adopted the JSD system which is a distribution model for journals.
Klopotek Welcome and State of the Company - Uli Klopotek
Uli Klopotek provided information on the Klopotek beginning stating that they are now entering their 18th year as a publishing systems organization. They have continued to grow; customer totals for this year are 1,500 new users; in total 14,000+ now using their systems. The direction of Klopotek is realizing the market strategy and moving forward with it.
Uli spoke on the impending digital market and the challenge that Publishers face. He discussed the strategies and investments being made by Klopotek to assist Publishers in being ready for these challenges and investments. These include; Product Component Manager, a new GUI and support of cloud computing. Uli spoke in generalities while the Information presented in the Technology Roadmap and NexGen discussion supported and detailed this.
Changing model of business is now recognizing new streams of income, for example a publishing company has a Chief Rights Officer. This person is responsible for seeing rights to authors that come from all different ‘authors’ over 1.5 million. An example of the difference in publishing which is now driven by the consumer.
The publishing market is changing, the dynamics of consumer and technology change have never been more complex to understand or harder to monetize.Publishers who understand their customers will be fit for the future and will be able to survive this difference.
16M in revenue last year 3.7m in software investments. The Klopotek company downsized from 195 to 175 over the last year.
Project Reviews- Roundup of initiatives throughout user community - Susan Lehrhaupt, User Community
Susan Lehrhauptled a review of projects that were completed over the last year by the companies at the meeting.
CRM – three of the companies mentioned had recently moved or updated their systems to GoldMine and Salesforce.com.
SharePoint – this application is being used by many of the companies for portal and a central data exchange system.
Credit card verification – one company has implemented a system where the entire credit card process is reviewed and verified independent of their internal GTS system. This system provides better security from credit card information being held internally.
CR & R – widely used and implemented by 3 companies attending.
Klopotek Technology Roadmap - Gregor Wolf, Michael Mehl
Gregor Wolf, head of Development and Wolf-Michael Mehl, head of QA and CS discussed the new developments being done by Klopotek. The roadmap had a few updates that will be beneficial to us with some of the issues we have had with the systems. These updates will not be available until the newest update, Klopotek 9.8, which is scheduled for release 2nd Quarter 2011.
Development - Klopotek invested in 7000 days – 3800 innovations funded by Klopotek, 3200 are customer requested enhancements.
Product DataSynchronization – the usability of having content with different appearances. Klopotek has made gains in this aspect and has created highlighted fields to display how this can be done.
Support global publishers
Support data cleansing and data updates
Mass updates – product selection
Data revision can be done on a selection list rather than individually.
This can be done for classifications, status and edition info.
Editorial planner
Allows the editorial department to plan publications in a flexible manner.
Implemented for UNESCO, in Germany Wellspring is going to start using this
Production
Xml metadata is being supported in other areas of Klopotek. in field of calculation this information can be exported into excel templates. Highly used in Profit & Loss reports.
Product component module – this application is an enhancement to the product tool in Klopotek. The product will provide straightforward solutions to updating title information. The tedious task of adding a new edition is made much easier with this tool. Where products are categorized in areas and at times constrained it can now be broken down and re-used much easier. Having titles that have similar information this tool allows them to be combined and re-used, which includes the rights. This may be more useful as we enter a digital marketplace. Workflows and schedules can be utilized in this area of the application.
Klopotek is working through the challenge of digitations. Product that has multiple product types and individually structured data can be re-used and combined with other products to provide new products easily and quickly. the components then provide re-usability of content. This can be tracked and followed with standard unique numbering that can hold information at the component level. Rights and registrations as well as royalties need to be maintained for these product components. Klopotek is working towards a way to combine and use this information.
ONIX update
Klopotek supports ONIX 3.0 standard. They are able to support creation of new ONIX 3.0 XSLs
DAM Support
PPM is now supporting DAM and it is built in, it will allow for the download and upload of digital assets for a product.
ST4 is the content management system that Klopotek supports and you can have it held here and then directly connected to Klopotek. This format allows the connection of product down to the component level with a connection to Klopotek the entire time. the component is now able to be distributed even before the book or product publishes and allows for easier handling of information.
ST4 can hold book reviews, cover and cover parts for product and production data not available, the content data of the product can be held.
Klopotek wants to support the entire delivery of a product in different formats and to be able to identify the metadata down to the component. It provides an all-in-one content upgrading system that handles multiple isbn’s and multiple formats.
Workflow/task management
Klopotek is working on a prototype to provide a workflow orientation that uses task management, this tool will provide steps and tasks that can be used in PPM by the user that is dedicated to each step in the workflow. This will be available next year.
Contract Rights & Royalties – changes are being made to accommodate for payment of ‘parts’ of products and other challenges with the diverse amount of revenue streams coming from the electronic, e-book and custom publishing options that are now being offered.
UC4 Automation Engine – this is a replacement to the Que32 batch system and should be a bonus immediately. We have continual issues with the batch application failing. There are times the batch will fail due to inaccurate data but other times where it ‘hangs’ or stops operating itself. The UC4 application is a replacement that will also provide more flexibility with running batch jobs. We are now bound to run it at certain times, the new application will allow us to run it based on events. For example, rather than having to wait to initiate high priority orders based the status can initiate an activity automatically.
Uniserv – Address validation and de-duplication is currently done using the Fuzzy! Address verification System. Since the purchase of this software by SAP, response has been very lengthy. The Uniserv product should provide a more stable tool and its pricing model should also be less expensive.
New GUI – We had a preview of this about a year ago, it is finally going to be available. The screen design and usage should provide more readability. The use of the tabs and right clicks will be minimized since they have re-designed all forms. We probably won’t see this until 2012 since it will be launched with the 9.8 version, but I think waiting until version 10 would be more advantageous to use as they get the kinks out.
Klopotek Software as a Service – Klopotek has entered the ‘cloud’ and is now providing access to their application via the internet. Cloud computing provides access to applications from outside of a company and uses the internet with a secure connection to use the application. Klopotek has set this up for a few companies and has had good feedback. This eliminates the need for in-house equipment, setup, or maintenance. The negative is the reliance on the internet network connection and cost. Based on the number of users this can be an expensive alternative.
Usability And Workflow
Workflows can be designed and implemented by the owner of the information. That is now in prototype but it provides more flexibility based on the users needs. This achieves a task-based workflow.The changes are utilizing .net technology for expansion and re-use for the owner of the application.
Roadmap to .Net
All new code is written in C#, powerscript (from powerbuilder) and C# are combined at this time. integration of c# and power builder are combined.Power builder 12(PB12) allows the code to be compiled in C# so it can be recompiled and used with the C# work. this allows for the full migration of PB12. This then provides for a full native .net integration which includes Powerbuilder12 base and C#. the final completion step is to convert the java code to c#.
Research
Klopotek has 3 projects that are validating and verifying the changes they are proposing to do under their roadmap.
Klopotek Software as a service (in a cloud)
Currently 10 customers running Klopotek in a ‘cloud’. US Datacenters are run in US
BREAK OUT SESSIONS
Marketing campaign management – George Ricciardi
Klopotek’s marketing campaign module was discussed, e-mail campaign programs were discussed. CDC is using live Ball and tongo
Sales automation tools were discussed
- CDC uses GoldMine
- FA Davis uses Sales Logix
USER GROUP DISCUSSION
Some suggestions were shared on proliferating information on the meeting and the group.
- Send a file off to user group to confirm the usage.
- Publish a list of users and what they are using
- Quarterly meetings are useful and would like to continue to have them.
- Vehicles of communication ACTION ITEM; e-mail group, facebook,
- list of users and what they use
- Klopotek users group meeting
meeting with Klopotek on a regular time for new product development for things they would like to have.
Lori stated it would be good to have the users group have the ability to look at what they’re doing for the entire group
Tara recognized that pain points are recognized by Klopotek and they do listen try to make changes.
EDI – Tara Warren
The reporting and BI discussions began with the current difficulties that FA Davis is dealing with the recent issues with dropped files between Klopotek and our VAN providers, and asked if anyone had these problems and how they deal with them. We also addressed the possible future implementations of 857’s as a replacement for separate EDI Invoicing and Advanced shipping. Tara then began a discussion on when/if the current EDI standards will be replaced with XML. We also briefly addressed the topic of how internal EDI reporting is handled within Klopotek. Discussion centered around XML versus EDI and what people thought – not a lot new in this area was general discussion – would like to see it be easier across the board
Users Private Session
CONSULTANT REPLACEMENTS
Consultants that we are used to disappear without any notice. These people are now no longer available. This should be addressed to have some type of lead time to allow us the ability to know. there is an issue with the costs involved when we have to pay the time for these people to get up to speed on how this is working.
ESTIMATES
Estimates are way too far off, too expensive and they’re not with a 10-15% error range
DOCUMENTATION
Documentation is lacking and needs to be better on what they provideConfusing and difficult to deal with the documentation, they need to be reviewed as a guide for users to know how to use and upgrade.
ACTION ITEM: the user group can provide examples we can share it with them.
Upgrade to GTS 6.6, Brian Sours responded that it wasn’t too difficult of a changeover to make the upgrade from 6.4 to 6.6.Upgrades are being done to enable the users to move up to the latest versions.
Brian would like to know what they are going to do about the JSD product. A new front end would be nice to see and have.
CUSTOMER SERVICE
Concerned about support calls and how this is headed.
REPORTS
Everyone has stated they had to build themselves. This is a frustration since everyone was promised that Klopotek would do it for them.
Tara reported that she is using tableau with reports from SharePoint and the OLAP cube.
GREAT PLAINS RESPONSE
QUESTION about who is using interface for Klopotek. F.A. Davis is using this for:
- sales invoices
- po’s
- customer
- vendor
3 companiesare using GP for their systems. They’re looking to find out more about how this will be incorporated in Klopotek.ACTION ITEM: Keep all updated on GP Usage in Klopotek as Klopotek as promised.
PCI compliance
Chuma asked about what users are doing for PCI compliance. Most of the companies are using an outside source.
Tuesday October 26, 2010
Users Private Session
Voting for Users Group Positions
Treasurer – Nan Smith
Event coordinator – Shelley LeNeveu
Secretary – Duane Koenig
Vice President – Tara Warren
President – George Ricciardi
Quarterly Meeting Notes
- Voting on meeting minutes
- Results of discussion with Klopotek
Location of meeting – discussion of different places possibly to have the meeting in Nashville or elsewhere.
The users group would be happy to move it to another place but would like to plan the meeting.
Everyone is in agreement that we can move the meeting to Nashville, TN for next year’s meeting.
ACTION ITEM: We discussed breaking up the agenda so there was time for GTS and Klopotek separately to discuss issues.
October or September are both decent times.
Brian Sours of ATP would like to know more about APIs and who is using this and how they are using this.
ACTION ITEM: DISCUSS WITH KLOPOTEK/GTS API USAGE, PERHAPS A DISCUSSION POINT IN MONTHLY MEETINGS.
Presentations – it would be good to have an application that someone is using to show off.
User demonstrations were discussed, adding this to the agenda. A detailed description of what each topic is and how it may be used.
System administration was brought up as an added agenda item.
Documentation is resource lacking, there is information that is irrelevant or not related to an area to work properly.
More details on items in agenda to provide more scope and focus on whether they should attend.
The consultants have the best opportunity to identify and match up clients to assist in finding out who may be doing the same thing. It would be nice for the consultants to match up people and what they are using to assist in being more efficient in using the system.
IDEAS FOR NEXT YEAR’S MEETING
Networking – is there enough time for everyone to meet and discuss issues and items.
Account Manager - would be nice to have a time to meet with the account managers and discuss and update what is being done. In order for it to be in Nashville we need to have the entire consultant/developers should attend.
TOPICAL LUNCHES! – topic for each table to sit and discuss during lunch. Have a Klopotek expert at each table to lead discussion.
May be a good time to discuss what people are using and how they are using the system.
Using the quarterly meetings as discussion points for the users group meeting. it would be good to have this during the quarterly meetings to start up the discussion and let this go.
Monthly meetings – having them done over the phone with discussion points.
Power point presentations – we would like to have them so we can use them. NOTE; These will be included with minutes.
A list of who is coming and what they are doing was suggested to assist with what they are working on.
During the opening bring up everyone’s name, role, what they are using and how long they have been using the system.