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Reprints Desk, Inc. document delivery LAW LIBRARIANS LEAD THE WAY reimagined © 2014 Reprints Desk, Inc.
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Document Delivery Re-Imagined

Aug 23, 2014

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Law

Ian Palmer

‘Document Delivery Reimagined: Law Firm Librarians Lead the Way’ is a Reprints Desk e-book that details the market insights behind the 2014 service re-launch, after acquiring California-based 4 Research Solutions, Inc. in late 2012.
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Page 1: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

Reprints Desk, Inc.

document delivery

LAW LIBRARIANS LEAD THE WAYreimagined

© 2014 Reprints Desk, Inc.

Page 2: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

DOCUMENT DELIVERY REIMAGINEDLAW LIBRARIANS LEAD THE WAYBY JOHN SCHROETER

Sitting in a pub in Ireland some years ago, I was joined by a local who was eager to chat with a Yank.

v.

The conversation soon turned to the many things the Irish simply do better than Americans. I found myself in total agreement when it came to their warm, personal social ethic—not to mention the live traditional music—we were enjoying in this small town public house. “The big countries,” he said in thick Irish brogue, “have a lot to learn from the little countries.”

I remembered that episode as I began to think about this eBook. In short, it’s about the acquisition by a document delivery juggernaut of a small, long tail service provider. As it turned out, the big company, Reprints Desk, had quite a lot to learn from the little company, Research Solutions. So much so, in fact, that it caused the big company to rethink many aspects of its approach to the document delivery business.

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Reprints Desk CEO Peter Derycz with 4 Research Solutions founders

Shane Hunt and Chris Atwood.

preface

Page 3: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

That’s remarkable, because Reprints Desk was already the most respected solution provider in the document delivery space.

The research firm Outsell, Inc. made that point in their report, Document Delivery: Best Practices and Vendor Scorecard.

The study surveyed information management professionals for “. . . feedback on key attributes that drive their satisfaction with document delivery vendors: content depth and breadth, fair cost, and ease of doing business. This last category encompasses technical competence and willingness to work with customers.

Reprints Desk scored the best in all three attributes, continuing its standout performance . . .”

So just what did such a standout “big company” learn from a small niche player? Plenty. And it’s to the good of all its customers. But it wasn’t easy.

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Page 4: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

It almost goes without saying that a corporate acquisition will present certain

operational, philosophical, and cultural differences that need to be resolved one way or another.

But with both companies being in the document delivery business, how hard could that be?

Well, think of the differences between Amazon and the independent bookstore. Both are in the

business of selling books, but their approaches to that business are immensely different.

It happens that this is a particularly fitting analogy, with Reprints Desk playing Amazon to

Research Solution’s corner bookstore.

In November, 2012, document delivery leader Reprints Desk, Inc. acquired Research Solutions, a “boutique” supplier of scholarly research papers to law firms. The details of the acquisition were straightforward enough, but the assimilation of the operation into

Reprints Desk’s world was quite another matter. The first indications that the gears were about to grind came with the clash of the two companies’ business models—and cultures—each driven by the very different needs and expectations of their respective customer bases.

A ROCKY ROAD

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Page 5: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

A little background will help here. Reprints Desk, founded in 2006, has been focused

on bringing enhanced value to document delivery through technology and pricing innovation—

much like Amazon’s approach to selling books. The company’s document delivery platform

was specifically designed for efficiency and ease of use at reasonable cost, especially for

the unmediated self-servicing customer. Reprints Desk’s groundbreaking system enabled the

company to provide outstanding value, which not only won it many fans, but made it possibly

the fastest growing company in the space.

In short, the model is based on high document volume, fast turnaround, and reliable

delivery of exactly what the customer ordered—with little, if any, direct customer interaction.

But while that’s been a boon to the needs of the scientific, technical, and medical markets—

Reprints Desk’s core audiences—the sophisticated platform’s broad set of document delivery

benefits didn’t mean a thing to the legal market. And therein lies the rub. The law librarian, it

turns out, is not at all well-served by an automated “off-the-shelf” document delivery model—

innovative, powerful, and cost-saving technology notwithstanding. Which brings us to the

second unexpected difficulty the company encountered.

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Page 6: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

Where Reprints Desk’s system strives for

streamlined automation in all necessary areas of document

delivery, Research Solutions’ value proposition was

driven by the delivery of high-touch, individualized,

“concierge-style” service. Theirs was a business model

specifically designed to accommodate the particular—and

often unique—workflow requirements of the individual

law librarian, which demand competent, careful, hands-on

attention. Definitely not a one-size-fits-all proposition.

The fact is every law firm has a different way of doing things: they routinely

require special handling, flexible invoicing arrangements, and irregular support needs—

anathema to an Amazon-like model, but precisely the kind of value the corner bookstore is

accustomed to providing.

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Page 7: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

When merging this personalized approach with Reprints Desk’s automated

infrastructure—and rolling it out to the customer base without sufficient forethought or

testing—customer disappointment was the inevitable result. A lack of understanding of the legal

market landscape and improperly set expectations combined to do considerable damage to those

customer relationships. On the plus side, however, one cultural value shared equally by both

companies was a fanatically pro-customer attitude, reinforced by a commitment to post-sales

support. That led to a concerted effort to “get it right.”

To this end, the company conducted a series of in-depth voice-of-the-customer research sessions to better understand the highly specialized needs of the legal market. The insights gained served to define a service-oriented document delivery program geared specifically to the unique needs of the law librarian.

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Meaning they don’t wait or stop looking simply because a document vendor

was unable to produce. This is in sharp contrast to the typical scientific requester: if a cited

article proves elusive, a sufficiently similar substitute will often do. Not so in the legal market.

Consequently, law librarians maintain relationships with multiple service providers, and regularly

look to alternative document sourcing channels (including local and university libraries). The

implications of this for a document delivery vendor are myriad. And because law librarians are

pragmatic by necessity, loyalty to a particular service provider can be a fleeting thing.

THE BIG TAKEAWAY

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The research, conducted via facilitated focus groups and individual interviews, yielded surprises even to the acquired staff of Research Solutions, who, for a decade, had been diligently honing their service offerings for the legal market.

First and foremost, the study found that law librarians are exceptionally resourceful: when a document or other information asset is needed, it is needed.

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Complicating this picture is a perceived lack of transparency of many document

delivery vendors, to say nothing of poor communications—qualities that are essential to building

a relationship of trust. It’s the quality of these relationships that drive loyalty, and loyalty is

earned. To keep it, a solution provider must constantly be on its “A” game, and that “A” game

is comprised of three essential service attributes that must always be in play: communication,

ease, and speed. Here’s what the research showed about each:

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Reprinks Desk’s Special Services Team is made up of experienced document delivery professionals driven by a single objective: working with law librarians to handcraft an ideal document delivery workflow, tailored specifically to the needs of an individual law office.

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1. COMMUNICATION.

The more efficient the better. Because the needs of the law

librarian are, more often than not, urgent, they need to be kept in the loop even

as the request (or request batch) is being processed. Frequent status updates,

acknowledgements, early alerts of potential sourcing difficulty, and other

process-related communications are essential to building trust and confidence.

Legal document delivery presents a convergence—if not a perfect

storm—of ambitious requests, esoteric subject matter, and the requirement for

rapid and reliable turnaround. Filling such orders requires real-time interaction

to ensure that what is needed is delivered on time, and what can’t be delivered

(or might present deadline jeopardy) is identified and communicated up front,

or as soon as possible. To say to the law librarian—a day late and without any

interim communication—“Well, we couldn’t get everything, but what

we did get, we got really cost effectively,” is not acceptable.

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Page 11: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

2. EASE OF DOING BUSINESS.

The easier the better. Because the needs of each law office are

unique, it is essential that a document delivery solution provider be adaptable to

the particular workflows of the office. Moreover, the service must cater to the

individual preferences of the law librarian, who may not want to use a

Web-based UI to enter document orders, but might rather prefer to communicate

via email, or in more urgent cases, by phone. And because librarians are not

the end users, but are instead mediating the sourcing process, when a document

cannot be procured, they need to be able to explain why that is so to the

requesting attorney.

Additionally, ease of doing business extends to tactical

considerations including various methods and modes of batch delivery,

downloads, copyright clearances—even the timing and special management of

invoices so that law firms can better manage their own billables each month.

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3. SPEED OF DELIVERY.

The faster the better. Time urgency is typically the rule rather than

the exception. And many law librarians understand the term “rush” to

mean not “same day” but “within hours.” In order to support that kind of

demand, a service provider needs to operate 24/7 and have a great diversity of

document retrieval resources—including the more obscure variety or those that

require hands-on human attention. This is particularly important for the legal

sector, whose needs on any given day can vary widely based on the nature of the

legal cases that drive the demand.

By combining deep publisher relationships, a strong library

network, and other content partners, a 99% on-time fulfilment rate can be

achieved, provided the service provider also exhibits exceptional competence.

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These, then, are the lessons learned. When two companies merge, one of two things can happen: either their respective strengths and weaknesses cancel each other out, or they combine to create a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Reprints Desk was determined to realize the latter.

The inherent qualities and competencies of both Research Solutions and Reprints Desk made

them market leaders. Figuring out how to combine the best of both to synthesize something new and valuable proved to be a difficult, but ultimately rewarding process.

In the end, the effort yielded Reprints Desk’s high-performance Special Services Team, an organization dedicated to providing person-to-person service supported by a powerful, technology-driven delivery process.

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conclusion

Page 14: Document Delivery Re-Imagined

Transcending this capability, though, is a mindset that seeks to make document delivery as responsive as a municipal utility. That is, when a customer has a demand, it is consistently met with service, speed, and reliability. Like a utility, Reprints Desk is committed to providing a seamless customer experience that results in problems solved, and seemingly without effort: the right documents show up precisely when, where, and how you need them, time and time again.

Want to give it a try? Reprints Desk welcomes the opportunity to show you how—with your help—it has reimagined document delivery.

Contact Reprints Desk by phone at +1 (310) 421-2230 or by email at [email protected].

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REPRINTS DESK’S SPECIAL SERVICES•Allthecommunicationyourequire:You’ll have the direct phone line and email address of our Special Services team for on-demand support.•Painlessbatchingoforders:You won’t be inundated with emails to sift through, but rather receive a single email confirmation followed by a single, one-click batch delivery. We’ll even cc designated parties on specific batches.•You’llneverbeleftinthedark:Expect timely updates on the

progress of all your orders. •Specialneedsmet: Whether it’s cover and TOC, cover and copyright page, date stamps, or other unique needs spanning dictionary projects to document clean-up, count on them all to be covered professionally and precisely.

•CustomnamingofPDFs:We’ll deliver documents named according to your specific naming conventions.•Zipdeliveries: We’ll deliver large projects via zipped files, neatly organized to make processing easy.

•Highqualitydocuments: We obtain native PDFs whenever possible (usually in color). Moreover, we ensure that all delivered documents are clean, neat, and legible.

•Copyrightcomplianceassured: Enjoy the peace of mind that comes with a provider that adheres to international laws.•Andofcourse,fast,reliable,andeconomicaldelivery: No other document delivery solution provider can match our unique

combination of competent personal service, depth of resources, operational efficiencies, and outstanding overall value. Won’tyougiveitatrytoday?