A dedication to lifelong learning drives digital transformation
With Peter Marney, SVP and CTO, Wiley
In 1807, Charles Wiley opened a little print shop in Manhattan and was soon made famous by author clients like Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville. Today, Wiley stands as one of the most respected global publishing companies.
Still, surviving as a traditional publisher in an increasingly digital world is tough stuff, and as SVP and Chief Product Technology Officer Peter Marney admits, “We’re in an industry where print is generally in decline.” Wiley, one of the world’s largest publishers of higher-education books and peer-reviewed scholarly research, now has to contend with all the different ways people consume information in addition to paper books: ebooks, audio books, rentable downloadable texts, YouTube how-to videos, Wikipedia and, indeed, the Internet at large.
To stay relevant and remain a leader, Wiley is committed to creating new business models and internal processes that put content in customers’ hands faster in and more forms. The company is rapidly transforming from a print-based model to one that’s interactive and largely digital, defined by mainstream mobile habits of users of all types.
“At home we live like the Jetsons, but often we come to the office and work like the Flintstones. By bringing Box and collaboration tools in, we’re bringing some of that Jetsons experience into the office.”
— Peter Marney, SVP and CTO, Wiley
The expectation of secure, fluid mobile experiences compels a shift
The expectations of Wiley’s academically inclined customers have shifted. They no longer feel content to wait a month to read an article on an important scientific discovery. “One of the really big opportunities for Wiley in reinventing content and going digital-first,” says Marney, “is to take advantage of mobile.”
To meet those changing expectations, Wiley is working on initiatives such as integrating artificial intelligence into products and creating tutorials that don’t require the download of an entire book. Giving a student, scholar or research scientist instant access to information in the moment they’re looking for it means creating a better experience on a mobile device.
Rethinking the format of content is a high priority, and building a robust digital ecosystem is core to this effort. To better build paper-free and mobile products for customers, Wiley took a hard look at internal processes and tools.
“Digital-first is not singular; rather, it’s plural. It’s a different answer for each of our types of content.”
— Peter Marney
A smarter workflow for richer global collaboration
Swift collaboration is important for a company whose product is information, and transitioning to the cloud began to be an imperative in order for collaboration to truly take hold at Wiley.
One of the challenges Marney initially faced was that there was no roadmap in place for digital transformation, and certainly no architecture to enable cloud content management. Marney remembers the old Wiley office environment: “Traditionally, the office was library-like. Lots of offices, not very much open space, not much collaboration. We undertook a massive effort to transform our office. We decided to go totally open, with tons of collaboration space.. and tons of collaboration tools.”
The tools were a crucial part of Wiley’s digital transformation, because stakeholders involved in Wiley’s publishing process include editors and designers in offices all over the world, widely dispersed authors working from home and vendors in the Philippines and India. To unite all of these users and enable facile collaboration, the company has created a digital publishing platform. It revamps every step of the publication process, from author submission of a manuscript to publishing the finished piece online. Stakeholders from all over the world can now more easily and fluidly move through the publishing process to get better products to market faster
“Everyone is eager to adapt,” Marney says. “The challenge is in knowing the best thing to do.” Initially, there was an ingrained preconception within Wiley that the cloud wouldn’t be scalable or secure enough for the company’s IP needs. But through a collaboration with Box — carefully selected because of its built-in security features, enterprise-level scalability and ease of user adoption — this changed.
With Box, Marney made it easy for stakeholders everywhere to adopt cloud content management at work. “Box allows us to work with them all seamlessly as if we were all sitting in the same office on the same network.” It also provides a crucial element for Wiley’s content management: sophisticated governance.
“What Box gives us in terms of cloud content management is seamlessness. You don’t even need to think about it. It’s there for everybody.”
— Peter Marney
The heightened need for governance when valuable IP is at stake
The threat to the type of intellectual property in Wiley’s canon looms larger and larger: pirate websites that steal content, theft of higher-education textbook copy, illegitimate copying and sharing. “Security and governance is a huge concern for Wiley,” Marney explains, “both as a corporate enterprise and also protecting our content.” Any approach Wiley can use to protect its intellectual property is considered.
“How do we give consumers what they want, where they want it, when they want it? It’s not about taking a book and putting it online, but rather about transforming the digital experience.”
— Peter Marney
For Marney and other forward-thinking leaders, there’s no one single magic technology solution. Rather, they’re curating the best third-party platforms to create digital ecosystems that enable cloud content management without sacrificing the secure protection of IP. They’re enabling internal collaboration among dispersed stakeholders, facilitating better digital products for end users and creating information governance above and beyond the old shared drives.
All content roads now lead to the cloud
All of Wiley’s digital initiatives drive toward the same goal: giving end users a better experience using all the technology at their disposal. Marney looks forward to exploring automation and AI tools. He says, “We can do so much more with our content than we were doing before with metadata tagging, conversations [within comments], and the really robust version-controlling that Box has.” Productivity benefits will also come from making manuscripts more secure to transfer, instituting traceability and eliminating more than a dozen CMS systems Wiley currently has throughout the enterprise.
“There’s tremendous opportunity for us. We can truly revamp the way we’re managing content and working with our authors and vendor partners. We’ve really only scratched the surface of the capabilities.”
— Peter Marney
By turning to Cloud Content Management, Wiley has facilitated the ability for everyone within the organization to collaborate more quickly, efficiently and securely to get radical new customer-facing products to market.
