For more than 20 years, Virtusales Publishing Solutions has served as a leading provider of software for publishers. Recently, Virtusales completed a major upgrade to its BiblioSuite software providing it with an intuitive, modern user interface powered by the latest Microsoft and Google technology. Released to Biblio users throughout 2022 as an inclusive upgrade, it delivers what is essentially a brand new system without the cost or disruption of implementing new software.
BiblioSuite is designed to meet the unique and changing needs of publishers by allowing them to select the relevant modules and features to solve their business challenges with tailored publishing solutions. Whether it’s managing metadata, calculating royalty payments, managing inventory, or enhancing connectivity, BiblioSuite is proven to be an unparalleled resource for today’s publishers and their employees.
PW caught up with Richard Hart, CTO at Virtusales, to talk about BiblioSuite, the recent upgrade, and how Virtusales is helping publishers.
For those who aren’t familiar with Virtusales, how would you describe the services offered?
First and foremost, Virtusales is a technology business, and our goal is to solve the current and future challenges publishers face, with cutting-edge software and systems. We also offer expert consultancy, friendly support, and flexible hosting options to publishers and content providers. We work with some of the world's leading publishers across the U.K., U.S., Australia, and Europe, such as PRH, Hachette, Macmillan, and university presses including Oxford, Harvard, and Princeton. We help them streamline their workflows, bring efficiencies to their business processes, manage and adapt to industry changes, improve productivity, and seamlessly connect and integrate with more external systems; in the process, costs are naturally reduced.
Who can benefit most from BiblioSuite?
Publishers looking to grow their business and profitability by doing more with their existing resources.
How can an integrated system like BiblioSuite transform a publishing company?
Biblio is the key source of publishing data and the ‘single truth’ of information about a title and content. It brings together different teams and systems so that everyone can see and access the validated information they need, when they need it, to do their job. Without a system like Biblio publishers are continually contacting internal disparate teams to find out the status of various projects and for data updates because the information isn’t readily available.
BiblioSuite can optimize workflows, increase productivity and transform a publishing company by removing the inefficiencies of rekeying information into multiple systems, sharing information and communicating changes, and dealing with inconsistencies and mistakes. For example, contract information only needs to be entered into BiblioSuite once for it to be available to all internal teams that need access to it, including other integrated parts of the system, for example to perform royalty calculations, and to external systems/third parties via interfaces. One customer said, “The self-service capability has been amazing, with approximately 60% to 70% reduction in some areas in time spent with people asking for information on contracts, rights, and other administrative data.”
What can you share about the recent changes you’ve made to BiblioSuite? What do you most want people to know about the upgrade?
Released to all Biblio customers as an inclusive upgrade, the new BiblioSuite provides a completely re-engineered, best-in-class system, enabling publishers to roll out new workflows within their current system's landscape, fully optimizing their processes to increase efficiency and productivity while avoiding the disruption and cost of implementing new software. The result is an ultramodern suite of publishing software providing solutions for publishers and content providers, with support for any saleable product—from physical books to digital content, journals, merchandise, and licenses—plus a wide range of identifiers (including those beyond the traditional ISBN). In addition to the entirely new User Interface, some key new features include: innovative new dashboards being brought into all areas of the system, allowing users to customize their own view of the data they need to perform their role; a complete API suite to seamlessly integrate data, in real-time, with other systems; and a new Google-style global search feature spanning all modules, allowing users to instantly access the data they need from anywhere in the system.
We are very proud that, after more than 20 years of investment, BiblioSuite remains at the leading edge for all types of publishing!
What makes BiblioSuite so user-friendly?
Intuitively designed with wizards, dashboards, and comprehensive user securities, BiblioSuite can be personalized to show the right information to the right people at the right time, and enables tasks to be performed easily and efficiently.
Can you talk a little about your customer service support?
We receive a lot of praise from our customers about our dedicated team of knowledgeable customer service staff who are on standby to support any queries raised by our customer base around the globe. Many vendors charge customers to log support tickets, however Virtusales includes it as part of the service agreement, so customers don’t need to worry about asking questions and finding ongoing support.
Please share some details about BiblioSuite technology and what sets it apart from other management systems.
Virtusales is a Microsoft Certified Partner and has been using Microsoft technology for over 20 years. Today BiblioSuite runs on the latest .NET application framework from Microsoft (previously called .NET Core) which is specifically designed for web applications, and is faster, more scalable, and more secure than Microsoft’s previous version. The framework upgrade also means BiblioSuite can be used on servers and hardware not running Microsoft Windows, which is especially important for the varying setups IT departments now have and for a future constantly moving more and more to the cloud. Finally, .NET supports the development and implementation of a micro-service architecture, allowing an application to be split into smaller focussed parts for easier development, deployment, maintenance, and scaling, while still running as one seamless application from the user’s perspective. This means publishers can select the relevant solutions from BiblioSuite to manage a specific department or workflow, or the entire suite can be implemented for a full ERP publishing management system.
We selected Google Angular for the user interface to allow for faster UI development and deployment and to create a more personal user experience. Utilizing Google’s framework allows us to piggyback on their accessibility and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards, security features and to incorporate a powerful global search, and create a responsive design for use on multiple devices.
How is BiblioSuite continuing to adapt to the needs of the publishing industry?
BiblioSuite is continually improving through our regular upgrade process, delivering new versions of the system to our community of publishers. We have a collaborative development philosophy and work in close partnership with our customers to develop new features and solutions. This means they are able to tailor and develop BiblioSuite to their needs which is fully supported without the risk and cost of developing and supporting their own software. New releases of BiblioSuite are rolled out at no additional cost and keep the system up to date with changes in the industry.
What do customers appreciate most about BiblioSuite?
The Virtusales team is made up of publishing and technical experts, many of whom have worked in the industry and with the company for many years. The benefit of this is that as well as knowing BiblioSuite, they also know publishing, helping publishers realize efficiencies to ultimately increase output with the same resources. For example, Penn State went from publishing 11 journals with four users to 88 journals with the same number of users following the implementation of BiblioSuite. Every customer has a dedicated relationship manager who can help them roll the system out to new areas of the business and utilize new functionality as it is released.
