ANALYSIS AND NEWS POPSICLES AND PUBLISHERS
Deepika Bajaj explains why ice cream sellers and scholarly publishing
have more in common than you might think
L
earned societies and other smaller publishers find themselves at a crossroads, struggling to understand how to adapt to the changing needs of academia in the face of flat or falling revenue opportunities. What can publishers do to adapt to the new digital realities and remain relevant? The answer is business intelligence (BI). Why is BI so vital in business? Take an example that we’re all familiar with, the humble ice cream van. What type of insight would an ice cream vendor need when choosing a neighbourhood in which to sell? Primarily, he would need to know if there was indeed a customer base – it would be hard to sell ice cream in a neighborhood where there were no children.
Do these kids like popsicles more than ice cream sandwiches? With the right answer, the vendor will be able to reduce the cost of inventory upkeep while increasing customer satisfaction. With limited variables, all his decisions would be based on a relational database. The problem is: it is all in his head. This problem has been solved with the advent of the open-source distributed database framework Apache Hadoop, which made big data storage a walk in the park. Soon it became obvious that data collation wasn’t a hurdle. Processing it was the bigger problem. What do you do when there is such an overwhelming amount of unprocessed data? It becomes imperative to have tools to give a structure to the data and present it in the least time-consuming and most efficient format.
This is where tools for analytics and BI come into play. Tools are indispensable in the digital space because of the sheer number of variables. To understand why, let’s look at a more modern example, the blogger. Let’s imagine that, despite churning out an article a day, a web journalist discovers that
www.researchinformation.info @researchinfo
the majority of visitors spend almost no time on her blog – she has a very high bounce rate. Interfaces like Google Analytics are a huge opportunity here. Not only can she identify which of her posts are the most read, but she can generate more content along similar lines. Voila! In no time, her revenue from advertisements starts pouring in. There is much to lose in failing to embrace the new generation of business analytics. The old way to do business is to stick to a model, based on the merits that the business
‘It is faltering. BI solutions would help such a publisher identify latent trends’
perceives, and wait for the customer to develop a liking for it.
Businesses need to adapt in real time. This becomes critical because the span of engagement is miniscule in the digital world. Let’s go back to smaller publishers and learned societies. Many are facing falls in membership and publishing revenue. Many fear that the role of such publishers is in jeopardy and are frustrated by the fact that the market and academia doesn’t support
them in the way that they used to. Without a finger on the pulse of the market, it is impossible to know where they are faltering. BI solutions would help such a publisher identify latent trends while engaging with customers like never before. Properly implemented BI solutions offer a lifeline to publishers who are struggling to understand how to adapt. With tools like OLAP, assumption-based strategies can now be completely avoided. With analytics, revenue from existing models can be maximised while new models are rigorously tested.
The future of BI and analytics solutions is only likely to only get brighter. Processed information is going to be the most sought after currency. With technology adapting and growing at an unprecedented pace, soon it will be possible to analyse markets before setting foot in them. Technology will make it possible to evaluate the promise of a yet-to-be- launched product, based on concrete and credible market data. We can soon say farewell to the good-old, yet often unreliable, gut instinct.
Deepika Bajaj is VP, publisher relations at RedLink, a Silicon Valley start-up that provides business intelligence tools to publishers. This feature was originally posted at
www.digital-science.com/blog
DECEMBER 2015/JANUARY 2016 Research Information 7
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