A brick and mortar publisher went digital with FeldsparTech to create Online Library for Educational Institutions
When lockdowns became a norm and when teaching turned online, our client was asked to supply digital copies of courseware. With no infrastructure in place to share digital content and enforce copyright protection our client was faced with the grim prospect of losing business unless a solution was implemented in time.
CUSTOMER
Publisher
A reputed publishing house of fiction, non fiction, academic and educational titles in vernacular languages. Our client also supplies printed books to libraries of educational institutions worldwide. These institutions range from primary schools to universities offering courses on language studies.
CHALLENGES
Reluctance to Digitize | Lack of Tech Expertise | Time & Budget
Book publishing has traditionally been a low technology business. A lot of advancement has taken place in the way content is generated. But the distribution and copyright protection have largely remained difficult and expensive to implement.
This has resulted in many traditional publishing houses resisting the upgrade to digital distribution.
The COVID pandemic forced every business activity online for survival. Teaching was no exception and educational institutions followed suit. Books that were so far being used in physical form were now required in digitized versions.
Adding a digital channel in limited time and with limited budget seemed next to impossible to our client.
With no IT team, even basic planning and analysis of the effort for digitization seemed colossal and our client desperately needed a reliable technology partner.
Our publisher customer evaluated many IT solution providers but none were willing to do it in the time and budget constraints put forth to them. Many vendors opted out citing the complexities and risks associated with the implementation.
EXPECTATIONS
Great Online Reading Experience | Copyright Protection | Cost-efficiency
One of the expectations was to ensure that the online reading experience had to be similar or better than the printed book itself.
Some of the libraries wanted a mechanism for renting and charging as per time and usage. A 'pay per page-read' model.
Converting content into digital form is relatively easier and a one time effort. But the real challenge is distribution and piracy protection. A foolproof mechanism of protecting the content from piracy.
Digitizing large number of books was a daunting task. All the title conversions had to be done fast without taking too much manual effort. Adding people would have escalated the costs.
Functionality for accounting and tax calculations as per local laws across geographies, ability to create curated digital libraries for educational institutions, performance and easy navigation were some of the other requirements.
ENGAGEMENT
Incremental | Agile | Accelerated
After interacting with FeldsparTech the publisher was convinced that the project could be done in time but wanted to be doubly sure before proceeding. A prototype stage was planned and FeldsparTech was able to demonstrate that the desired solution could be achieved in quick time using the Atman Platform.
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FeldsparTech started with automating digitization of books since the titles were in large numbers
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In parallel, the Atman platform was used to develop the flow for digital libraries.
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Registration and access functionalities were easy to implement with Atman's pre-built components.
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After every milestone a demo was performed for the Publisher.
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Feedback from the client was taken after every demo.
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The feedback and inputs were incorporated promptly. Incrementally the solution was built and demonstrated again.
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This process was repeated until both parties were satisfied with the outcome.
The first set of books were available for access in digitized form within 6 weeks of the project start. In the subsequent stage we made all the other books available online.
The publisher has now a global reach. The 'pay per page-read model' has been very popular as it provides value to the readers. This implementation has helped our customer increase the revenue by 30% within 6 months of launch.