Is Your Back Office Ready for the World?

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, August, 2000

"Opening up your internal systems is probably the scariest and most overlooked aspect of going to the Internet," says Guy Russo, chief information officer of Intertec Publishing. "It is really true that your customer is just two clicks away. That means there are things you need to think about as you start using the Web for subscription renewals.

You're in a 7/24 environment now--seven days a week, 24 hours a day. People can be looking at their receivable balance at 2 o'clock in the morning or 2 o'clock in the afternoon. That has the greatest impact on us." Publishers need to look at their information systems infrastructure, says Russo. "You have to standardize all the applications servers, the type of hardware you have, and create an enterprise management model so that your IS organization can manage 7/24--whether they're in the building, outside the building, or whatever. What happens now is, if the server with your accounts receivable should crash at 5 o'clock on Friday, nothing gets fixed. Once accounting has gone home, nobody cares. But if you have an external application that allows customers to look at their receivable balance, the application has to be fixed by 5:05." Russo contends that to the extent that IS people need to be service-oriented and service-based, the IS organization has to have an Internet mentality. "You have to change the mindset of the IS organization to be immediately responsive," he says.