Evaluation of Institutional Sales Program
Keywords: Publishing Policies, Publishing Practices, Marketing, Market Development, Market Research, Market Intelligence
KGL Consulting was engaged by a large scientific society to evaluate the society’s site licensing operations and offer suggestions for improving efficiency and effectiveness with the objective of better poising the organization for sales and product growth.
Relying on its deep understanding of the trends that have impacted institutional sales over the past several decades as well as its knowledge of the society’s growing portfolio and recent internal changes, KGL Consulting performed a comprehensive operational audit and was able to recommend specific and actionable recommendations for improvement.
The project plan included a discovery phase during which the KGL Consulting team conducted detailed stakeholder interviews with key site licensing staff to understand current processes, assets, and challenges from an internal perspective. KGL Consulting also reviewed the group’s organizational chart, job descriptions, process documents, sales plans, budgets, and pricing and negotiation policies, and analyzed a sampling of licensing deals to identify what was and was not working well, and make general recommendations about what to keep and what to improve.
At the end of its evaluation, KGL Consulting delivered to the society a detailed situation analysis describing recent sales trends and specifying the site licensing program’s current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This situation analysis was the cornerstone for KGL Consulting’s summary report and recommendations, which included a restructured organizational chart and thorough sales process flowchart. The society quickly decided to implement many of the suggested changes, and KGL Consulting provided support during the transition period by reviewing and commenting on new job descriptions, providing support to the sales team in the form of institutional sales gap analyses by region, and conducting a full-scale analysis and remodeling of the institutional and consortia pricing structure.