Book Consortium's IT Overhaul a Recipe for Success | |
|By Matt Kelly | |
|September 21, 2005 | |
| | |
|Case Study: A book distributor completely overhauls its business processes, resulting | |
|in a turnaround in sales and growth. | |
| |
| |
| |
|Ask Don Linn to describe the state of IT at Consortium Book & Sales Distribution Inc. when he acquired the company in 2001 and he |
|gives a tart three-word answer. It was, he said, "a whole morass." |
|That's apparently quite an understatement. As the nation's largest distributor of independent book publishers, Consortium, of St. |
|Paul, Minn., had limped along for 17 years with an IBM mainframe to apprise publishers of which titles were selling or not. |
|By the time Linn arrived, the rickety old database could barely muster up sales figures 30 days late—which, in today's online world of|
|book retailing, might as well be shelved in the out-of-print section. |
|"It