Order Out of Chaos: A case study about creating a consistent flow of correct information
By Dr. Warren P. Baker, Senior Editor, AMG Publishers
Information. It is what bridges the gap between
publisher and consumer. If they don’t know about the book, they can’t
buy the book. So getting the word out there is a key aspect of doing
business. Metadata, the information about our books, has never been
more important than it is in the digital age. Not having your
information out there means no sales. Misinformation about your
products also results in lost sales, and brings about customer
confusion and frustration. Finding a solution to keep accurate
information in front of as many consumers as possible will benefit
everyone.
When AMG Publishers began the process of creating
eBooks we became aware that in some cases there were as many variations
of information about a product as there were places where that
information was found. It seemed like every online vendor had different
information, and changes we made to correct problems were slowly
implemented. In one case, we would make the changes one day only to
have someone else’s feed about our books replace the information we had
just corrected. The need was there for one centralized database that
could somehow be used both internally and externally to make our
metadata consistent and accurate across the wide spectrum of vendors,
distributors, and even in our own house.
It was about this time, at an ECPA Executive Leadership Summit, that I learned of a company called Firebrand Technologies.
Firebrand has an Eloquence program that provided a database for all our
metadata, from which both Excel and ONIX feeds can be delivered
automatically.
Through Eloquence we can keep all our
metadata in one place; we make it accurate there, and Firebrand sends
it out to hundreds of trading partners. We no longer have to spend
hours working in Excel to provide our metadata to various partners via
their own specialized spreadsheets. And if there is a discrepancy
between our data and what a trading partner has on the web, we simply
notify Firebrand and Firebrand takes care of connecting with that
partner to get it corrected.
Now that we have an organized
database, we keep finding more and more uses for it. Earlier this year
we decided it was time for a new website and web store. We didn’t want
to do a one-time conversion of data and then have to keep updating both
the store and our database separately. So I thought, why not use our
ONIX feed from Firebrand to do this? If the trading partners use it
for their stores, why shouldn’t we use it for our store? So, we had
our web store and site designer build an interface to receive the ONIX
data and use that data to create and update the database for our web
store. Each week, when we have the file of updated entries from
Firebrand, the interface allows us to make those changes we made into
Eloquence right into our store. We have gone from having a chaotic
collection of metadata about our books to having one consistent flow of
information for everyone.
Dr. Warren Baker is the Senior Editor
of AMG Publishers in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He is co-author of The
Complete Word Study Dictionary: Old Testament, and the general editor of The
Complete Word Study Old Testament. He also served as managing editor
of The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament and The
Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible.
Dr. Baker holds several degrees: B.A., Clearwater
Christian College; M.Div., S.T.M., and D.R.E., Faith Theological
Seminary. He served as Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Faith
Seminary until he began his career in Christian publishing twenty-one years
ago.
ECPA has partnered with Firebrand Technologies, Inc. to offer ECPA Title Management Web:
an online solution that allows marketing departments of any size
publisher to manage the data for their title listing in one convenient
location. Everything from images, to jacket copy, table of contents,
and awards information can be easily stored in this online repository.
Email to a Friend