Circulation Managers for
publications use
Fulfillment Systems to create mailing labels for
magazines and to track
subscriptions and billing. Interactive
Fulfillment System (
IFS) is one such
software product created
NexTech Systems Corp.
The software can cost as much as $10,000. The high price is due to the very small market (magazine publishers) and the high need for
customization.
Magazine subscriptions can create some
hairy data problems.
For example, if you sell a 10-issue
subscription (to be delivered over 12 months) the software must track the dates when each issue is sent out. In addition to this if you receive a payment of $10 for the subscription up-front the financial software must keep track of how many issues were sent out, since the customer might cancel or request a refund. That means that you only make $1 of the funds from the subscription available for company spending as each issue is
served. The rest of the money must be held in an emergency account in case something goes wrong.
Needless to say the accounting can become very confusing. A good
fulfillment system simplifies all of these problems. Unfortunately good
fulfillment systems are rare. (and can cost as much as $100,000) IFS has been used at my company for nearly 10 years. It's a
good system, but since the software is old it is woefully out of date. It still runs in a
text-based DOS environment.
Small publishing companies who cannot afford custom
fulfillment systems have only a few newer products for in-house fulfillment to choose from. All of these are poorly made at present (2003) since they cannot be customized to the complex needs of magazines as well as the old, but sturdy IFS.
If someone created a highly configurable (
open source even?)
fulfillment system they might be able to make a buck or two setting it up and
customizing it for small publishers.
Are you scared of the
maths involved? Go on do it.
I dare you.