The American Society for Training & Development (ASTD) is the world’s largest association dedicated to workplace learning and development professionals. ASTD’s members come from more than 100 countries and connect locally in more than 125 U.S. chapters and with more than 20 international partners. Members work in thousands of organizations of all sizes, in government, as independent consultants, and suppliers.

On an annual basis, ASTD publishes approximately 20 books, 150 monthly newsletters, a monthly and a quarterly magazine as well as 5 research reports in addition to numerous conferences. While a member organization, ASTD is also a niche market publisher. ASTD needed to find a better way to publish and provide content to its members.

ASTD hired RSI Content Solutions to provide both a content management platform as well as a digital publishing strategy that would bring content to the market in a timely manner. RSuite CMS provided an enterprise metadata framework that allowed ASTD end users the ability to find content based on standardized metadata fields as opposed to using text search applications as they did in the past.

Business Goal:
• Find a better way to publish and provide content to its members.

Results:
• Ability to build new businesses beyond just publishing.
• Can now apply metadata tools to tag documents in a highly contextualized manner.
• Tagged more than 2,000 chapters of books and 2,000 magazine articles drastically reducing production.

"RSuite provides to me and to my organization, a really strong core. That means I can really, really quickly iterate and make very fast changes that are going to drive the value within my organization"

--Anthony Allen, Director of Digital Media, American Society for Training & Development

A couple years ago there was an article from wsj.com under the Cubical Culture section that struck a chord with me: “Management to IT: We don’t like you either.” As evidenced by the title, the inherent conflict between IT and management is never ending. And even though the article was published 5 years ago, we still see the conflict arise in many publishing and media organizations.

Management today at many companies expect more out of IT organizations than in previous years. It's no longer acceptable to request an 18- to 24-month project life cycle and not show a return on investment quickly. If IT continues to do these types of things, they will render themselves useless and out of a job. The old days of “we can build it better than any product on the market” is long gone.

For publishers I have seen a shift over the past 5 years related to this build-vs-buy mindset. If your IT organization is still touting that they can do it better, cheaper, faster by building a critical system (e.g., CMS) from scratch… run, run away as fast as you can. Given the wealth of tool sets available and the openness of many products on the market, why would an organization ever take the build-it-from-scratch approach? I'm genuinely interested in this and welcome your dialogue in the comments section.

I’m not biased when I make these statements. I’ve seen a renewed interest by publishers to license a product and show a return on investment quickly. This has been our mantra since day one with RSuite CMS. Our goal was to make a highly configurable CMS that can manage any content and be operational in a short period of time (under 12 weeks) to meet core requirements. Yes, there will be some organizations that require 12-month projects to migrate from one system to the next, but overall the trend has been implementing a new system, even for larger projects, in a much shorter time frame. The only way IT will be able to handle this shortened timeline is to license a software product that meets 70% of their core requirements pretty much out of the box such as RSuite CMS.

I can certainly understand why IT organizations at publishers want to build their own CMS. First, it’s fun to build software. Second, it gives more of a feeling of accomplishment than integrating third-party software. Finally, a programmer can have a job for life just making endless changes to the software (ok, that was a cheap shot).

Management today needs to understand that IT does have value and IT needs to understand that management has the right to ask questions. Reducing the stress between these organizations is critical to publishers making the right technology choices and implementing new systems on time and within budget.

Let us show you how RSuite CMS satifies management's desire to demonstrate ROI on CMS investment and IT's desire to play with cool technology.

Since the story broke early this morning, newsfeeds, blogs, and web sites are buzzing with the news that Newsweek will go digital only on December 31, 2012.

Tina Brown, editor in chief, explained "We are transitioning Newsweek, not saying goodbye to it," Brown said. "We remain committed to Newsweek and to the journalism that it represents. This decision is not about the quality of the brand or the journalism -- that is as powerful as ever. It is about the challenging economics of print publishing and distribution."

Brown cites a Pew Research Center report that found 39% of Americans get news from an online source. And indeed that percentage will increase in the coming years. Transitioning the organization now to digital only will help secure the foundation Newsweek laid in 1933 when the publication began.

RSI Content Solutions has been recognized by the Philadelphia Business Journal as a best place to work in the Philadelphia region. This is the 8^th time the company has received this recognition from its staff and the Philadelphia Business Journal.

The Philadelphia Business Journal’s Best Place to Work program receives hundreds of entries each year and only ten companies in each of five categories are recognized.  Each company is evaluated on overall benefits and creative employee programs. Results from an extensive employee survey are calculated to determine recognition and ranking.

“Co-founder Lisa Bos and I made a commitment to our employees and our clients when we started this company,” stated Barry Bealer, president and CEO at RSI Content Solutions.  “We wanted to offer a stimulating and rewarding work environment that would parlay into outstanding publishing solution software for our customers. Recognition like this leads me to believe we are on the right path.”

The Philadelphia Business Journal's research partner, Wichita, Kansas-based Quantum Market Research tabulated the results of thousands of online surveys completed by employees to establish the rank order. Common themes among top companies focused on work-life balance; respect and caring for employees; recognition of accomplishments; feeling empowered; good teamwork and commitment to community.

To learn more about RSI Content Solutions, please visit www.rsicms.com.

RSI Content Solutions and Data Conversion Laboratory are collecting input on the state of technology adoption and digital revenue metrics from publishing and media organizations. We want to understand and analyze how publishers are approaching the digital landscape to benefit customers and recognize increased revenue from multi-channel publishing. We've created a quick survey to gather input and will share the results of this survey at our November webinar. Additionally, everyone who takes the survey is entered in a drawing for a $100 American Express gift card. The winner of the drawing will be announced here on this blog.

Here's what you need to do to take part:

• Complete publishers' survey

• Register for our webinar to see the survey results on November 14th

Going to Frankfurt Book Fair? Wunderbar!

RSuite CMS is a content management system for publishers to create, manage, transform, and deliver a digital future. Visit our publishing technologists in Frankfurt and see how RSuite 4.0, powered by MarkLogic, provides a publishing solution to manage the entire life cycle of your content.

We invite you and your colleagues to join us along with our partner MarkLogic in Hall 4.2 | Stand K429. Learn how some of the world's leading publishers are harnessing the power of RSuite CMS to achieve a multi-channel digital publishing solution.

Join us for a Drinks Reception on Wednesday 10 Oct at 16:30 at our stand.

If you are unable to attend but would like to discuss how RSuite CMS will help your organisation, please contact Sarah Silveri at tel: +1 610 276 1375. Click here to visit RSuite CMS at Hall 4.2 | Stand K429

“RSuite CMS combined with the DITA for Publishers framework is helping us achieve the holy grail of single-source publishing: XML content automatically delivered to InDesign and to multiple ebook delivery formats. The transformations from structured content to designed content have been seamless, allowing our staff to focus on content and product development.”

“We see RSuite as a key technology that will allow us to implement industrial strength content management, including version control and automated content distribution, to best support our digital publishing program.”

“Our editorial process was labor intensive, and the problem couldn't be fixed by adding more people. With RSuite CMS, we get our product in the hands of customers faster, which makes us competitive with the bigger publishers with deeper pockets.”

RSI Content Solutions is recognized on the sixth annual Inc. 500|5000 list, an exclusive ranking of the nation's fastest-growing private companies. The list represents the most comprehensive look at the most important segment of the economy—America’s independent entrepreneurs.  RSI Content Solutions joins Yelp, yogurt maker Chobani, Giftcards.com, KIND, and famed hatmaker Tilly’s, among other prominent brands featured on this year’s list.

“While I’m personally thrilled to be recognized by the Inc. 500|5000, it really is recognition that we provide our customers with an outstanding publishing solution,” stated Barry Bealer, CEO, co-founder, and president of RSI Content Solutions. “And the team we’ve created is responsible for serving our customers with the industry’s only content management system for publishers and ensuring it meets their quality demands.”

In a stagnant economic environment, median growth rate of 2012 Inc. 500|5000 companies remains an impressive 97%. The companies on this year’s list report having created over 400,000 jobs in the past 3 years, and aggregate revenue among the honorees reached $299 billion.

"Now, more than ever, we depend on Inc. 500/5000 companies to spur innovation, provide jobs, and drive the economy forward.  Growth companies, not large corporations, are where the action is,” explains Inc. Editor Eric Schurenberg.

Last Thursday, publishing professionals met in Philadelphia for the 6th annual RSuite CMS User Conference. Brian Howard from Book Business highlighted a number of the key takeaways, including the following:

In Lisa Bos’ talk on metadata, she used the example of Oxford University Press, whose Oxford Index provides customers tools to drill deep for the content they’re seeking. She noted that OUP captures “twenties of items of metadata for each product,” clarifying that by product she didn’t mean books, but chapters of books. The richer your metadata, the more opportunities there are for your customers to find your products.

On the issue of what publishers’ products are called in the digital age, Evan Owens of the American Institute of Physics (AIP) said: “We’re an ‘article’ publisher; ‘issues’ are an artifact of the past. It’s article first.” Discussing the benefits of implementing a strategic CMS, AIP’s Owens noted that implementing RSuite was “an opportunity to step back, clear the deck and think about what we want to achieve.” He noted that early adopters — AIP was online early — can get in a rut, and that like lots of early Internet adopters, “everything was in a file system and there wasn’t an infrastructure to manage things.” As with publishers using file systems, there was “no version control; anyone in the building could change a file at any time, and I couldn’t do anything about it.” Implementing a CMS allowed AIP to protect its most valuable asset.

The complete review is available here.

The RSuite User Conference kicks off tomorrow morning, September 20th, in Philadelphia at the Hub Cira Centre. The agenda is packed with a fantastic lineup of speakers and presentations.

John Blossom, President of Shore Communications will keynote the event and outline the cutting edge of content technologies that he has defined as "The Second Web" and how they are yet again redefining successful models for high-margin publishing businesses.

Can't be in Philadelphia? Join us via Livestream! Catch us on Twitter!

Breakfast...lunch...happy hour...all served with a healthy dose of content management for publishers.

See you tomorrow!

RSI Content Solutions, makers of RSuite CMS, a content management system for publishers, will host over 150 publishing executives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for the 6th annual RSuite User Conference on September 20^th.

Now in its 6^th year, the annual RSuite User Conference provides a forum for members of the global RSuite community, and those considering RSuite, to interact, learn about content management, and network with other publishing professionals. RSuite CMS manages the full life cycle of content. From content creation through multi-channel distribution of print, ebooks, and licensed content, RSuite CMS is used by some of the world's leading publishers.

“We are always thrilled to host our RSuite clients in one location to communicate upcoming product plans, provide a forum to exchange ideas, and show through both case studies and demonstrations how clients are leveraging the power of RSuite,” stated Barry Bealer, CEO and co-founder at RSI Content Solutions.

RSI Content Solutions would also like to acknowledge the generosity of our sponsors---SPi Global, MarkLogic, Scope eKnowledge, Yuxi Pacific, and ITC InfoTech.

To learn more about the conference and register, please visit www.rsicms.com/rsuc2012.