Personal computers find fulfillment

Personal computers find fulfillment

Ask fulfillment managers what's new in the fulfillment arena and invariably they point to one development: personal computers. Like their colleagues in many other departments in the publishing company, fulfillment professionals are discovering that PCs can make life easier in a number of ways. Although only the smallest of fulfillment operations can be managed totally on PCs, all manner of publishers are using microcomputers as adjunct tools-- whether for easing the drudgery of routine clerical tasks or for doing complex analyses made possible by the speed of "number crunching' on PCs.

The proliferation of PCs in fulfillment departments has come about mainly in the last two to three years. "It's exploded as software has become available and people have become more sophisticated about their use,' remarks Tina Porter, vice president/marketing at FAI, a large service bureau. Three years ago at FAI's annual client seminar, only 2 percent of the attendees responded positively when asked if they were using PCs in their fulfillment operations, according to Porter. When the same question was asked earlier this year, more than half of the 75 people in the room raised their hands.

The role of micros in the fulfillment department is bound to grow as more managers become familiar with the technology and as software advances, professionals believe. The very nature of fulfillment--a labor-intensive process requiring absolute accuracy in data entry and analysis--makes it a perfect candidate for help from a friendly PC. And as PCs cut down on some of the time-consuming manual tasks in a fulfillment system, managers can turn their attention to more . . . fulfilling . . . challenges.

Spreadsheet analysis most common

PCs are being put to work on an assortment of fulfillment projects, from preparation of audit statements to customer service. Most common is using the computers for spreadsheet-type analyses, popularized by software packages such as Lotus 1-2-3. Monitoring subscription production and pay-up by source, for example, is one common analysis done using spreadsheet software. Once the report format is set up on the PC, it is easy to add new information and to update totals.

In many cases, the spreadsheet analyses done on the PC involve rekeying data from hard copy reports compiled by the publisher's service bureau (or by the in-house mainframe). But increasingly, publishers are "downloading' data from the main data file into the PC, either directly via a modem hookup or by having the data transferred to a diskette that can be read by the PC software. Downloading means transferring blocks of data from the main computer into the PC's memory, from which it can be called up and manipulated. Because downloading eliminates any rekeying of data, it is faster and more accurate than entering figures from a hard copy report for further manipulation on the PC.

Several fulfillment executives say they are experimenting with downloading now, while others have been taking advantage of the process for some time. The technique will undoubtedly grow in importance in months to come. As one service bureau executive put it, "It's not pushing the state of the art. It's just a question of doing it.'

In general, managers cite the combination of speed, accuracy and the ability to retain and analyze historical data as the main benefits PCs have brought to fulfillment operations. Circulators have always done analyses, comments William Strong of Crain Communications, but previously reports tended to be done on a project by project basis--such as after each direct mail promotion. With PCs, "We can keep an ongoing history and store it all in one place,' Strong says. "It's easy to bring it up, change it; it's accessible and flexible. This integrates everything.'

One of the biggest benefits, agrees Sport magazine's Kathy Tully Cestaro, is the permanent retention of data: "We're getting far away from ledger sheets that you can't read after a while anyway.'

Preparing for the auditors

Several fulfillment executives who spoke to FOLIO: said they began using PCs little by little, adding new functions and reports as familiarity with the software and its abilities increased. Often the executives started using the micro for simple word processing, for instance, and then moved on to spreadsheet analysis as they became more confident about the technology.

Carol Ohrbach, now head of the consulting firm Publishing Systems Facilitators in New York, first turned to a PC to help with a common annoyance while she was at Aerospace America: the audit statement.

The magazine, published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, had both member and nonmember subscribers. Fulfillment for the 35,000 member/subscribers was done in-house; a service bureau handled fulfillment for the 17,000 nonmember subscribers. Both sources had to be integrated for purposes of compiling the audited publisher's statement. Ohrbach had been preparing two separate statements and then combining them manually--a process she calls "dreadful.'

To simplify matters, she got a PC and Lotus 1-2-3 software. She then set up a complete set of Business Publications Audit of Circulation (BPA) worksheets on the computer--the same worksheets that publishers fill in by hand, paragraph by paragraph, in compiling their six-month figures for the BPA circulation statements. Once the worksheet formats were built into the computer, all Ohrbach had to do was plug in the figures for each circulation stream, paid and membership, and let Lotus combine them. For each successive circulation statement, the new figures were simply keyed into the worksheet, which had been stored on disk. By automating the preparation, Ohrbach estimates that she saved at least one man-week of labor each year.

Using the PC to prepare audit statements, in whole or in part, is common among the fulfillment executives who spoke to FOLIO:. Lynn Bushell, fulfillment manager for Bill Communication's Sales & Marketing Management, does the worksheet calculations for paragraphs five through eight of the BPA and ABC Publishers Statements on the computer. (These paragraphs record the prices at which subscriptions have been sold, the length in years of subs sold, the source of the subs, and the use of premiums.) She is comfortable enough now with the PC that she plans to prepare the whole statement on the computer.

The business publishers advisory committee to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) is currently working up a standard set of spreadsheet formats for preparing the ABC Publishers Statement. Seeing a need to streamline procedures for both circulation people and for the ABC auditors who verify each publisher's circulation claims, the committee moved to devise standard formats for PC users, according to Art Poehler, a committee member and corporate circulation director for Scripps Howard Publications. When the project is completed, probably by year end, ABC business publisher members will be provided with floppy disks with the report formats stored on them.

Customer service simplified

Many publishers, whether they have an in-house fulfillment system or rely on a service bureau, are using PCs as a tool for customer assistance. One simple way that customer service representatives use micros at Rodale Press, which has a large in-house system, is as word processors to correspond with subscribers. They create standard letters and postcards and insert the customer's name and address. The letters appear to be typewritten. "Use of text editing packages makes it easier for the letter writers in customer service to respond in a personal fashion,' explains Robert Nichter, chief of operations auditing and vice president of the Fulfillment Managers Association.

A second common use for PCs in customer service is as an inquiry device to the customer records stored on the mainframe computer. Some service bureaus are now equipped to allow on-line inquiry: A customer service rep at the publisher's office can field a phone call from a subscriber by calling up that subscriber's file from the mainframe on his PC, via a telephone link. By reading the customer's file, the rep can at least answer questions and identify the cause of a problem, although he cannot alter the information on file.

Scripps Howard went to an on-line customer inquiry system this summer through its service bureau, Grenier Corp., to gain more control over its customer service operations. Before going on-line, inquiries for any of Scripps Howard's 11 business journals went through one of several channels: directly to the service bureau, to individuals at the separate publications in 11 cities, or to the company's headquarters. Inquiries that did not go directly to the service bureau were recorded on an inquiry form and sent by overnight delivery to Grenier.

With the on-line system in place, representatives at Scripps Howard simply hook into the main subscriber file at Grenier through a PC. They can then answer subscriber questions, check payment status and so on. The benefit is an increase in the quality of customer service, says Poehler. As for cost, he expects no increase overall. "With the benefit of increased service and cutting down on manual paperwork flying back and forth, it should be a wash,' he says.

Analyzing renewals

Monitoring the production and profitability of renewal efforts is an important function for which Georgia Myer, fulfillment manger at Straight Arrow Publishers, relies on a PC. Using the Supercalc spreadsheet program, she tracks the profit and loss of all renewal series by effort, showing net and gross response, bad pay, and so on. Generally she does a renewals analysis every six months, although she says she has done it far more often at times.

Myer appreciates the speed and accuracy of doing such reports on a PC. She finds she can do a profit and loss statement on six months' renewal production in two days using a micro, whereas it would take her up to two weeks to compile the report manually. Because of the efficiency and mathematical accuracy of using PCs and spreadsheet programs, "We can look at a large pool of data that we couldn't get a bird's-eye view of before,' Myer explains. She points out also that the spreadsheet packages are very flexible: While she uses Supercalc to analyze renewals, it can be programmed to analyze any series of statistics that the fulfillment manager is interested in tracking.

A few publishers are doing renewal analyses by downloading data from their service bureau's main file to a home-office PC. Neodata, one of the large bureaus that offer downloading, calls its program "Renew.' The publisher client requests specific information from its history of renewal response data stored on Neodata's main-frame --response according to package, for example, or performance of certain expire groups. Neodata transmits the data via telephone to the requester's PC. Users can then manipulate the data and compile it into reports of their own, or Neodata's, design.

FAI also can download statistical data on renewals to its clients. It transfers the information to diskettes, which are then mailed to the publisher. The diskettes are formatted to be used with either Lotus 1-2-3 or dBase III. The charge is on a per-diskette basis, which, according to Tina Porter, is less expensive for the publisher than rekeying the data from an FAI hard copy report.

Data that can be downloaded from a service bureau's main files are not limited to renewal information, of course. For example, Cheryl Cardran, circulation analyst at The New Yorker Magazine Inc., each week requests direct mail response data to be down-loaded through Neodata's "Answer' program. She specifies the source keys for which she wants to analyze response, and the information is transmitted directly to her PC. With that data in hand, she compiles profit and loss statements broken out by source. The fee is figured on a per-key basis. "It's faster than waiting for the paper reports,' she says.

Other spreadsheet reports

PC-savvy fulfillment managers are using the popular spreadsheet programs to produce all sorts of other statistical reports. Newsweek's director of subscriber services, Tom Carollo, provides a daily cash analysis report to the accounting department, for instance. The report includes total cash in, credit card receipts, charge orders by source, and foreign currency receipts--essentially a financial snapshot of Newsweek's subscription business on any particular day.

Other reports Carollo produces using a PC include an income and production report showing a breakdown of subscription orders by category (new, renewals, student, etc.) and the value of those orders; spreadsheets showing production from subscription agencies; and a report tracking premium inventory levels. Because Newsweek does its own fulfillment, receiving and caging all mail orders in-house, Carollo also uses the PC to track incoming mail by source.

The biggest benefit Carollo finds in PC-generated reports is, again, the elimination of human error in compiling statistics. Because data are stored electronically, updating the data files and recalculating totals is easy: The computer does it instantly. As Carollo points out, most of the reports he does now on the PC are not new, but previously they were compiled manually at a great expense in time. Carollo estimates that, over the last two to three years since converting to PCs, Newsweek has saved the equivalent of two full-time staffers at a cost of about $30,000 per year each.

Monitoring personnel staffing

Using PCs to monitor personnel staffing and productivity in the fulfillment department is another function that is in the "infancy stages' at Newsweek, Carollo says. Every employee keeps track of the time spent on a particular job so that an individual's productivity can be monitored. The productivity information is compiled partly on a PC and partly on the mainframe for the purpose of payroll budgeting and staffing, he explains.

Similarly, Rodale Press uses PCs for planning its staffing and payroll requirements. Each department's monthly personnel figures are compared to the previous year's figures as a way of tracking swings from one year to the next. The historical data (stored on a floppy disk), coupled with the circulation department's response projections from upcoming promotion campaigns, allow the fulfillment department to predict its payroll and personnel needs more accurately.

By analyzing this data on the PC, "You're better able to man your facility at peak times--to see when testing occurs and know what relationship that has to staffing requirements,' explains Rodale's Nichter. The more accurate planning has helped Rodale save on labor costs, Nichter says, by bringing in temporary workers just at peak times rather than carrying unnecessary employees at slower times. (Although temporary workers are paid more per hour than regular employees, they receive no benefits.)

PC-based fulfillment

For the most part, PCs in fulfillment occupy a supporting position only because they lack the capacity to both store and process the vast amount of data retained on a typical subscriber base. They are also limited by their single-user orientation, although the development of local area networks, which allow PCs to communicate with one another, is changing that.

However, it is possible to run an entire fulfillment operation, from order entry to renewal promotion, on a PC system--provided the subscriber base is small enough.

At Medical Economics Co., for example, fulfillment for a small group of paid subscriptions on four primarily controlled circulation publications is done totally in-house on a PC. The software used is Publiphile, a package designed strictly for fulfillment purposes. The paid list for each of the four magazines is no more than 3,000 names, according to Julie Betlejewski, fulfillment manager.

With one PC and one printer, orders are entered, labels and invoices printed, and reports detailing income, accounts receivable, bad debt, renewals and other statistics are produced. Processing of new paid subscription orders coincides with that of new controlled subscriptions (done by a service bureau) so that mailing labels are ready at the same time.

Eventually Betlejewski plans to put the paid circulation of four more magazines on the Publiphile system. The only drawback she cites is that the system is slower in processing and printing than a mainframe.

The final analysis

Fulfillment professionals are unanimously bullish regarding the role of PCs within their future fulfillment operations. Because PCs make complicated analyses so much easier to do-- indeed, in many cases, possible to do-- the information that the fulfillment department can now provide is more useful on a managerial level. The fulfillment department's perceived role is shifting away from that of a back-office mechanical operation--unglamorous and tedious.

Says Scripps Howard's Poehler, PCs are "helping to evolve circulation fulfillment from a clerical function to truly an information function.'

Photo: Calculations for the ABC Publishers Statement are done on a PC at Sales & Marketing Management. The worksheets for paragraphs one, two and five through nine were replicated, using spreadsheet software, and stored on disk; only the updated figures need to be entered each time.

Photo: A running history of Prevention's actual circulation compared to its rate base is generated in both graph and table form. The chart illustrates at a glance which issues of the Rodale monthly provided bonus circulation to advertisers.

Photo: Using Lotus 1-2-3, Crain Communications tracks the response and cost of a direct mail campaign from quantity mailed to net cost per order for each package and list used. Shown here is a campaign for the fictitious Crain's Weekly Business Book.

Photo: Subscription renewal analyses are also generated by the PC using a Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet package. The two printouts show gross and percent response by direct mail effort for each expire group (broken out by regular and bulk or group subscribers).

Photo: Newsweek does its own mail caging, so it monitors the flow of incoming mail, actual to budget, on a PC. Mail opening is one of many analyses previously compiled by hand. Newsweek began using PCs as adjuncts to its in-house fulfillment mainframe about four years ago.

Photo: Fulfillment payroll and personnel reports show Rodale managers how effectively they are deploying staff compared to budget, and to the prior year. Rodale uses both Goldengate (from Cullinet Software) and Lotus 1-2-3.

COPYRIGHT 1986 Copyright by Media Central Inc., A PRIMEDIA Company. All rights reserved.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group