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Trustees Set Strategy for Digital Course Materials
03/14/08
Acknowledging that digital course materials are key to the progress of the industry, the NACS Board of Trustees has launched a three-pronged strategy to help stores move in the right direction.
The strategy—which centers on partnerships, enhanced trade infrastructure, and education and awareness—was developed by the NACS Digital Content Strategic Planning Task Force, a 13-member group comprising a variety of college stores, a publisher, a used-book wholesaler, a professor, the American Booksellers Association, and the California State University Digital Marketplace Project. The task force spent four months crafting recommended priorities for NACS' digital content strategy.
At its regular CAMEX meeting Feb. 28 in San Antonio, TX, the NACS Board voted to accept all of the task force's recommendations for action and earmarked $200,000 for those initiatives.
During the meeting, board members discussed how crucial it is for more college stores to explore and experiment with digital delivery, as well as talk about it with other campus departments. That is becoming more urgent with the emergence of new competitors such as CourseSmart.com's direct sales, iTunes University, iChapters.com, and others. Most recently, NACS learned Amazon.com has approached the chief information officers at several higher education institutions to discuss course materials.
Board members emphasized that college stores may only have a short time to claim an active role in the delivery of digital content to students before other entities get in the game. "We have a small window of opportunity, but the window is coming down," said Past President William P. Simpson, general manager of the UConn Co-op, University of Connecticut.
In a strongly worded memorandum to the board, the task force also stressed a need for speed: "NACS and its members must prepare to take action today if we want to be involved in future business models."
The memo spelled out key recommendations for association action over the next one to three years. NACS is already undertaking some of the recommended measures, but the task force indicated the association should intensify those efforts.
The actions include:
Partnerships
NACS should strengthen existing partnerships and establish new ones on several levels, the task force memo noted.
The first priority is for NACS to find ways to work effectively with publishers, including CourseSmart.com. That means NACS will have to "set aside historical barriers," the task force noted. "Current conflicts are detracting from the ability and willingness of traditional channel participants to work together, and may provide publishers with the impetus to seek other partners outside of college stores."
Another top priority is for NACS to "issue a campus wake-up call" to stores and assist them in partnering with other campus entities (libraries, information technology, auxiliary services, centers for teaching excellence, and faculty) and in better understanding the needs of students and faculty.
In addition, the task force called for NACS to work closely with other trade and retail associations and organizations to leverage combined resources and to gather information on digital delivery by forming partnerships with companies reselling or wholesaling digital content to stores or direct to students.
Enhanced trade infrastructure
Noting that many stores "will be unable to engage in digital content sales on their own" due to technical barriers and inadequacies, the task force report said NACS must help by ensuring the development of affordable, scalable technology and business models to enable stores to sell and support digital content.
To that end, the task force identified three top priorities for NACS: providing digital tools and solutions to help stores position themselves as campus hubs; creating business models and marketing resources for digital delivery for stores of any size or type; and driving improvements in retail technologies for the industry, including point-of-sale and inventory systems, e-commerce, content delivery, and social networking environments.
NACS also should set up a more formal, extensive process for researching and identifying store best practices and consumer behavior patterns and for disseminating that information to members. The association also needs to seek out more innovative ways to serve its members, such as acting as an intermediary between stores and content providers.
Education and awareness
Possibly the most critical task for NACS is to get stores to realize that digital course materials are inevitable and the time to prepare is today, not tomorrow. Even though NACS has provided information and education on digital delivery for several years, the task force said NACS must find additional ways to get the word out plainly and clearly.
But it will be important, the task force memo said, for the industry's leaders and innovators to reinforce that message to their colleagues. Stores need to hear from other stores.
While NACS should place a priority on educating stores about marketing and selling digital content, the task force also saw a need for more basic training in e-commerce and the Internet, as well as education to encourage members to engage in more midrange strategic planning.
"Digital delivery is a very scary road to travel but once the journey begins, NACS members will become the problem solvers," the memo concluded.
For the full memorandum from the NACS Digital Content Strategic Planning Task Force, go to the password-protected Member Resource Center at nacs.org/members/secure/StrategicVisionFeb2008.pdf.
NACS members who don't have access to the online Member Resource Center can request an electronic copy of the memorandum by e-mailing cm@nacs.org.
The NACS Digital Content Strategic Planning Task Force members are:
- Todd Anderson, CCR, director, University of Alberta Bookstore, Edmonton, Canada
- Logan Campbell, senior vice president, sales and marketing, Pearson Higher Education, Upper Saddle River, NJ
- Regan Caruthers, director of communications and business development, California State University Digital Marketplace Project, Long Beach
- Peg Godwin, manager, University of Idaho Bookstore, Moscow
- Marilu Goodyear, professor and former CIO, Kansas University, Lawrence
- David Holcomb, CSP, director, Clackamas Community College Bookstore, Oregon City, OR
- Rich McDaniel, CSP, vice president, business services and environmental safety, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
- Kevin McKiernan, director of digital product strategy, MBS Textbook Exchange, Columbia, MO
- Maria Murtagh, CSP, director, Student Store, Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry, University of the Pacific, San Francisco, CA
- John Turk, CCR, director, UCSD Bookstore, University of California San Diego
- Len Vlahos, chief program officer, American Booksellers Association, Tarrytown, NY
- Bob Warner, president, University Book Store Inc., Kalamazoo, MI
For more information about the task force, e-mail Mark Nelson, NACS digital content strategist, at mnelson@nacs.org.
—Cindy Ruckman
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