Perspectives

The optimal marketing structure is a critical component of a successful marketing function. It is also an intensely debated topic. The structural debate is often framed as a binary choice between a centralized structure and a decentralized structure. Since both centralized and decentralized structures have compelling advantages and notable drawbacks, organizations feel as if they are faced with an impossible choice. Fortunately, there is another, and much better, way forward.

A major element of the scholarly and professional publishing ecosystem is the publishing services agreement, or PSA. In a PSA a professional association or learned society signs an agreement with a larger publisher for journal publishing services. What many societies negotiating a PSA fail to see, however, is that the large publisher has access to a great deal more information about the publishing business than the society does. This essential asymmetry of information provides an enormous advantage to the large publisher in negotiations.

Guaranteed revenues provide the cornerstone for many publishing services agreements (PSAs), the contracts that professional societies enter into with large publishers related to journal publishing. Societies looking to mitigate their risk and receive predictable revenues must be cognizant of guarantees that do not, in reality, do either of these things (or that do them poorly).

Marketing, as a discipline, has been undergoing profound change, and organizations that understand and embrace modern marketing have a substantial competitive advantage. In this post, Colleen Scollans, head of Clarke & Esposito’s Marketing & Digital Transformation Practice shares her eleven top tips for modern marketing design.

The publishing services RFP is often managed as if it is a “procurement” or “vendor selection” process. This is problematic, as such processes are typically designed to evaluate proposals for fee-for-service vendors. Publishers, however, are not vendors, and they do not typically operate under fee-for-service arrangements. Understanding that the procurement model is not suited to selecting a publisher and negotiating an agreement for publishing services, then what is the alternative? If the procurement model is not suited to selecting a publisher and negotiating an agreement for publishing services, what is the alternative?