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Delivery map: Route Xpert software from Willow Bend performs route building and maintenance and will even sequence delivery points into optimum driving and delivery patterns while taking into account such details as the distance from distribution centers to each delivery route. Enterprising suppliers talk about enterprise databasesNEW ORLEANS -- Can't we all just get along? Here's a mad idea: What if all the data at a newspaper could be used together? What if a customer could call in and ask, "How much do I owe?" and get an answer, rather than, "Here's how much you owe for classifieds -- now I'll transfer you to display." Or picture this: What if the marketing people had access to the data built by the circulation department? What if the newsroom could make use of the demographic data collected by marketing? A technological pipe dream? More of the patented Cole Papers sarcasm? If it were only so. Listen to Linda Gagnon, vice president for sales at Edgil Associates Inc. of North Chelmsford, Mass.: "We have a component to do that, but it is hard to get papers to do that. The territorial problems are greater than the technical problems at this time." Enterprise databases -- simply, databases that span an entire business -- are old hat in most industries. As in all too many things, though, newspapers have been too much in love with their traditions to notice. The tradition in question is the storied independence -- also known as blockheadedness -- of newspaper departments. But while Marketing is desperately defending its data from Circulation, and vice versa, we are faced with competitors who have moved far beyond enterprise databases and data warehouses to techniques such as data mining -- self-directed algorithms that crawl through vast stores of data, assembling associations too faint and vast for human recognition. Imagine if other industries worked like newspapers. For example, think about taking a trip to another city and staying at a hotel run by your typical stick-in-the-mud newspaper operation. After several wonderful days, you foolishly decide to check out. So you head down to the desk, wait in line, then check out -- only to be told that you can pay for only your room there. "Please step over to the phone desk next," you are told, and off you go to another line. After you settle up there, you of course get into the line to pay for room service. After that, it's the line for the bar tab -- and a long line that is. Then there's the line for that pay-per-view fight you watched. ... You get the picture. And you would certainly never put up with any hotel that treated you that way. So why is it newspapers expect their customers to blithely accept such treatment?
No cooperation
Willow Bend Communications Inc. of Dallas was showing a rather brilliant combination of enterprise database middleware and Geographic Information Systems software. Here's the deal: Willow Bend gets all your databases to work together. Then it maps your data so you can see exactly what is going on. For example, Willow Bend can map your current circulation routes against large-scale maps, so you can look for more efficient routes. It can map circulation data against demographic data in any breakdown you choose -- by town, by ZIP code, by neighborhood, and so forth. In short, it turns masses of raw numbers into easy-to-digest maps. "As a small vendor, we'll take what's given to us," said Vice President Brian Skruch. "Basically, we can deal with anything that is Open DataBase Connectivity [Odbc] compliant. We can definitely handle multiple machines." Skruch said his company sees an opportunity in its ability to bridge the departmental divisions so common to newspapers. "Newspapers are very compartmentalized," he said. "We usually start with the state of (a newspaper's) address file," said Willow Bend's Sunny Lerch. "We take their data and add to it. We start with all the addresses in the market, not just the subscriber list. Once they're able to see it visually, they can clean it up." Willow Bend, whose newspaper clients include the Cincinnati Enquirer, markets these products:
Composite database
"Dayton is asking us to enhance AdCentral to one composite database," she said, referring to Edgil's interface used to transfer data from an Atex advertising system to a Sybase SQL relational database. "We are currently investigating a project right now." Gagnon said that Edgil is also working on a billing manager that would enable newspapers to process transactions over the Web while allowing users to check their account status. The system -- which, for the sake of security, does not allow direct access to the database -- can be set up so that users would need a customer account number and password to access account data, she said. Over at Software Consulting Services of Nazareth, Pa., President Richard Cichelli also focused on the dichotomy between newspaper tradition and newspaper technology. "There are technical issues, and there are business issues," said Cichelli. "We've always had a concern for our previous system, which was made up of modules we could integrate. Our current system is integrated, and we can sell it as modules. That's the difference between the first million (in research and development) and the second million." The combination of an enterprise database and a solid data model allows SCS's Good News editorial front-end system to fit chameleon-like to any workflow, Cichelli said. "Good News supports a layout-driven model -- the design can be broadcast to the editorial staff so they can make stories fit -- or it can use a content model, which is usual to the U.S. "In the newsroom we're trying to make the technology disappear -- it's in the background," Cichelli said. "In the advertising department, we're trying to ensure that a business reengineering model is possible." Cichelli also cited newspaper culture problems as an obstacle to enterprise database implementation. An enterprise database is "not always wanted," Cichelli said. "The turf wars are terrible," he said. "We have newspapers where we can't get cooperation between display ad makeup and classified." SCS's advertising product, AdMax, handles retail and classified ad order entry, and supports contracts. It offers full composition, classified pagination, accounts receivable and transient billing in a single package, said Cichelli. It combines with SCS/Circulation so that users can handle all customer requests simultaneously. "It's an integrated context for customer service," he said. "We're aiming toward the European notion that an ad is an ad." Cichelli said AdMax had been installed at eight sites. AdMax, which interfaces with the ad-stacking program SCS/Layout 8000, features the ability to upsell customers based on additional runs, size changes and other advertising attributes. The classified module maintains earned contracts automatically; imports logos, and maintains a database of customer logos for automatic insertion, and offers user-definable upsells. Another company displaying enterprise database technology at NEXPO was Data Sciences Inc. of Silver Spring, Md. DSI Advertising and DSI Circulation are client/server systems built on an Oracle7 relational database using PowerBuilder from Sybase Inc. of Emeryville, Calif. DSI's systems allow a newspaper to create a unified work area that permits users to simultaneously handle data for display advertisers, classified advertisers, circulation and business systems. The system uses a common address architecture that integrates circulation and advertising customer information, and maintains one common address across all departments. There were other suppliers at NEXPO tossing around the term "enterprise database." When pressed, more than one allowed as to how they'd actually be doing that Real Soon Now(TM). To be fair -- rather than delivering the usual Cole Papers sarcasm -- they were quick to point out that their customers were either indifferent or actively opposed to the idea. Still, NEXPO '97 marked a turning point in that suppliers were showing working enterprise databases, rather than the traditional promises and vaporware. -- Christopher J. Feola
Data Sciences Inc., From THE COLE PAPERS, July 1997, Copyright © 1997, All Rights Reserved. |
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