PubEasy
www.pubeasy.com
Background
Middlesex based PubEasy was developed by VISTA Computer services, a supplier of enterprise solutions to the publishing industry for over 20 years. PubEasy, which employs 10 people, was designed to specifically meet the needs of current and prospective customers in the industry.
The Business Opportunity
The publishing industry has long suffered from problems with the supply chain. The retailer often does not know if book prices are accurate or if a specific book is available. At the other end of the chain, publishers are concerned with bookseller's lack of information about their products. As over 70% of calls to publishers' customer service centres are about price, availability and the status of individual orders, PubEasy decided to address this information gap and set up a system which would make the whole process a lot simpler.
The Solution
VISTA established PubEasy, an Internet enquiry and ordering service providing publishers distributors, wholesalers and booksellers with business-to-business e-commerce tools which reduce the cost of routine enquires, speed access to the status of orders and account information.
PubEasy's Transact service acts as a specialist electronic data interchange, allowing booksellers to process high volume inquiries and track orders with suppliers domestically and internationally. The site also offers a service called Exchange, which enables small publishers to launch a full-featured B2B e-commerce web site and trade with large retailers through PubEasy.
Success
With some of publishing's biggest names as affiliates, PubEasy has very quickly established itself as the industry's standard method of conducting business transactions electronically. More than 5,000 booksellers from over 96 countries are using the service to access title, price and availability information, to check orders and to access catalogues from participating publishers, distributors and wholesalers.
During 2000, the number of transactions processed by PubEasy approximately doubled as the site attracted new users and affiliates.
Year Overview
- Number of affiliates has increased and now includes major US players such as Random House and Harper Collins
- User base has increased by over 40%
- PubEasy now has over 5,000 registered users from 96 countries
- Implementation of two major new services - Transact and Exchange
- Investment by venture capitalists
The Future
The company is looking to increase their involvement with book selling retail chains, and is currently developing services which will consolidate information from multiple publishers from a single enquiry point. PubEasy is also developing an e-commerce solution to streamline the complicated process involved in returning unsold books to publishers. This has the potential to save huge amounts of money and time for the industry.
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