Strategic Analysis of Publishing Enterprise

Keywords: Strategy, Innovation, Publishing Policies, Publishing Practices, Marketing, Market Development, Market Research, Market Intelligence

KGL Consulting conducted a comprehensive strategic analysis over a two-year period of a major professional association with multiple publications serving a broad-based membership of clinicians and clinical, translational, and basic science researchers.

Against the backdrop of rapid change and uncertainty in the publishing industry, the association engaged us to map out a new global strategy for its publishing enterprise. In its final report, KGL Consulting made recommendations related to the association’s current publications and recommendations related to new publishing ventures.

Detailed suggestions for altering the publications management structure were offered to maximize the association’s ability to balance its role as publisher and responsibility to meet organizational objectives with the preservation of editorial freedom. Recommendations related to scope, size, and business model were made to ensure the continued vitality of the association’s basic science journals in an interdisciplinary age. Setting a specific, strategic goal in each operational area of publishing—editorial, production, marketing, and financial—was recommended to better attract and accommodate its growing international community.

To fulfill readers’ unmet needs for clinical information, KGL Consulting developed concepts and financial projections for various scenarios including infusing the flagship journal with more, clearly defined, and demarcated clinical practice among other more novel ideas. We undertook an analysis of the risks and opportunities in expanding the association’s scientific and medical publishing enterprise into other types of information resources. Not only did we assert that the association would do well to develop an integrated knowledge portal but we also made specific recommendations on how to staff and monetize the portal.

As KGL came to better understand the capabilities of the association and the needs of its community, we made many additional recommendations outside of the association’s RFP per se. Many of our recommendations were adopted, and two of these in particular led to almost immediate, sizable and sustained growth in revenues.