Harvard University Press finds more than order fulfillment and warehouse management
Customer Story
After implementing IBS Bookmaster, Harvard University Press realized the software can do just about anything from book production to finance. The company has managed to save space, time and money in the warehouse.
IBS warehouse management software drives the way Hardvard University Press operates on a day-to-day basis according to CFO and assisntant general manager Bill Lindsay.
The Harvard University Press (HUP) - a division of Harvard University – is a highly respected academic publishing house. The press was established in 1913 and has a turnover of USD 20 million today. HUP publishes around 150 new books every year, equating to 4,000 titles in print. The company normally has about three million books in stock. This number goes up a little during the summer months when new titles are being received.
“The majority of our orders are received electronically, so we don’t touch paper,” explains Bill Lindsay, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Director of Harvard University Press. “Our orders are actually received into a main computer at TriLiteral, which is a joint venture between Harvard, Yale and MIT University Presses, where they are processed and made ready for picking in the warehouse,” Lindsay adds. All three presses used to have separate computer systems and separate customer service operations until they united and formed TriLiteral, which now embraces all commercial services for the three presses.
The next major task was to find an IT company that would provide a solution to their complex order fulfillment and warehouse management issues. All the major suppliers were evaluated and IBS Bookmaster was finally chosen as the best provider of an integrated software solution that would bring the three presses together in one warehouse, process orders and ship them from the same location. While order fulfillment and warehouse management were the primary interest for the three presses, integrated modules for finance, royalties and book production were also purchased.
Efficient warehouse management
IBS Bookmaster allows the three presses to move books in and out of the picking areas as they are needed. This is a tremendous space saving environment. Without it they would have had to devote three or four times the amount of space to these tasks, resulting in very expensive operations. “Other IT companies had warehouse management systems, but they were very shallow”, explains Lindsay, “They really didn’t do the types of things we required. We wanted a modern warehouse management system because that’s where the real savings were.”
Another major benefit with the IBS solution is integrated Radio Frequency, which is used in the 155,000 square foot warehouse. Trucks move around the warehouse carrying pallets and IBS Bookmaster sends a RF message to each of the drivers and tells him what to do next. Because the software knows his location, if a more pressing task arises on his return journey, the system will interrupt and allocate the next assignment. The technical term for these interruptions is called ‘interleaving’ which ensures the drivers waste no time moving around the warehouse, if there is another task ready to be performed. The result has meant a massive amount of time-saving and a significant improvement in efficiency.
Keeping track of royalties
Royalties is also a very important area for the three presses. For every single book there is a contract between the publisher and the author. Typically, there is a royalty advance that helps the author get through the period of time when he or she is writing the book. The contract goes on to pay a certain amount on every book that’s sold, so the software system has to keep track of every sale and report on individual payments. “IBS Bookmaster provides a complete royalty statement for every single author, for every single project and consolidates them into payees because in some cases one agent may represent 50 or 60 authors,” explains Lindsay.
Return on investment
Initially the presses were looking in a narrow field for an order fulfillment and warehouse management system and are delighted with the decision to purchase IBS Bookmaster. “It was only after we started looking at it we realized that we’d bought a whole lot more and so far IBS Bookmaster has done just about anything we want it to do,” says Lindsay.
When it comes to return-on-investment, the presses decided to get a second opinion and invited the consultancy company who initially helped them to find out what the warehouse savings had been so far. They found that over a five year period costs were unchanged. Beating inflation was good but this was much better than was originally expected. “The IBS warehouse management software drives the way we operate on a day-to-day basis and consequently drives our savings”, says Lindsay. “We could not have run that efficiently if we didn’t have an up to date warehouse management system.”
Since installing IBS Bookmaster, the presses have had almost no post-inventory adjustments. “In fact, we decided not to do a physical inventory one year because it fell at an inappropriate time and our auditors had sufficient confidence in our inventory management ability. This would certainly not have been the case before we implemented IBS Bookmaster,” states Lindsay.
No regrets
Editors and authors are also very happy that the presses decided to purchase IBS Bookmaster as the system provides individual users with instantaneous access to the information they require, which has improved the interaction and relationships between all the parties.
HUP is currently in the process of implementing IBS Bookmaster’s integrated production module. This module is used for ordering books and allows production staff to create and monitor the purchase order, send it to the printer and finally create the check, which can be processed through IBS Bookmaster’s integrated accounts payable module.
Every year the presses hold a meeting to discuss whether they made the right decision to buy IBS Bookmaster and so far it’s always been a unanimous - yes we would.
Bill Lindsay, Chief Financial Officer and Assistant Director, HUP
Company profile
Name: Harvard University Press Region: US Operation: Book publishing Products: Scholarly books and journals Revenue: USD 20 Million Website: Harvard University Press
Issues
Major re-organization to central ized approach
Complex order fulfillment and warehouse requirement
Costly warehousing operation
Need to track royalties
Need for integrated RF and “interleaving”
Need for a modern warehouse management system
Need for instantaneous access.
Solution
Fully integrated publishing ERP software solution with modules for:
