At knk Software, broadening cloud offerings and helping clients to move to cloud-only solutions were major activities in the past two years. “We have been busy expanding our platform solutions not just in publishing software but also in becoming a trusted partner for digital transformation,” says CEO Sebastian Mayeres, whose team has strengthened the company’s content-first process support for the whole product life cycle, including content-based royalties, which will be of interest to professional and academic publishers. “We have also enhanced our support of all lead-to-invoice and order-to-cash processes for new flexible business models created by media companies.”
Eliminating data silos is one approach knk takes to helping clients shift their product-centric focus to one that is customer-centric. “In today’s applications, data is developed from disparate sources, internally and externally, and it helps if the client adopts a single technology platform to deal with it,” Mayeres says, adding that data silos are often the result of requirements specific to separate departmental applications in outdated legacy systems. “Until that data is structured, collated, and de-duped, it is difficult for the company management to see the big picture and make more intuitive decisions based on it. Publishers need to change their internal culture and structure in order to embrace the notion of data as a company-wide resource that is not owned by any single department. Data must be application-agnostic.”
In all of knkPublishing’s software implementations, Mayeres and his team put the client’s attention on their customers’ journey rather than on a series of individual sales transactions. “The goal is to build customer loyalty and community,” Mayeres says. “Our knk Integration Platform, for instance, allows our clients to build interfaces between their external systems and the central information model of knkPublishing.”
The author portal system is another area Mayeres is looking at. “For years, publishing information systems were focused on the customer side,” he says. “But publishers are becoming increasingly aware that improving the lot of their authors and content contributors can reflect positively on their bottom lines. However, royalty tracking is more complex than ever with the proliferation of new titles and content formats even as author communication systems that provide services to content creators and their agents grow ever more sophisticated. Thus, the author portal system—covering communications management, project data, royalty statements, and document access, for instance—must be securely integrated as a single repository that is accessible to all parties via reporting apps such as Microsoft’s Power BI and Document Management.”
“First, our software is built around Microsoft’s Dynamics ERP system, which is the beneficiary of massive R&D development and investment in software reliability and role-based security measures,” Mayeres says. “Users depend on it, and it is deployed in well over 100,000 companies across the globe. Additionally, most of our clients operate our software via Microsoft’s Azure Cloud Services, which provide a superior level of service and underlying data security.”
The company’s current focus is on emphasizing the strengths and opportunities for publishers deriving from the comprehensive platform that Microsoft and knk have to offer. “We are seeing more requests for IT strategy consultation as publishers look to modernize their existing, and increasingly important, IT landscape,” Mayeres says. “These include assistance on security, compatibility with other systems, and the flexibility to support new business and work models.”
“Our solutions are future-proof, as they are updated on a regular basis in terms of technology and function,” Mayeres says. “knkPublishing is currently updated every six months to the latest Microsoft technology. Its structure enables interoperability with other systems through modern APIs, standard interfaces, and the Common Data Service provided by Microsoft. It is not only the knk team that would potentially be able to further develop the system, but there is a Microsoft partner network constantly releasing new apps and standard functions that might be used for advanced reporting, logistics, and a lot more.”
Head over to booth H35 in Hall 3.0, where senior executives of knk Software—including Mayeres, John Lawson, managing director of its U.K. operations, and Carl Hubertus Mann, president of knk France—are available for on-site meetings and consultation.
This feature is published with the support of the digital companies covered in these articles.
