Best of Breed or Integrated Systems for Publishers?

This question may still linger in the minds of publishing executives and our purpose here is to clarify the issues so that those concerned can make an informed choice. We review the cost and value of each choice based on the core competencies of your business, and conclude that for most publishers, there is one clear winner.

Firstly, a little context. We are discussing this question in relation only to the core operating software – those systems that manage all your operational data. There may indeed be a need for best-of-breed applications that play a peripheral role and that have no real integration into the core operational systems in the company. To be clear, we are NOT addressing those systems. We ARE discussing the central systems that control business information, from editorial and production, asset management, and royalties and rights to supply chain management and financial reporting; these are applications that are commonly referred to as Enterprise Resource Planning or ERP.

The Choices

A best-of-breed solution offers exactly what it says, for a portion of your application portfolio, it provides a good solution for a specific need. This is in comparison to an integrated software solution whose strength derives from presenting a complete solution for all or most of the workflows in which a publisher is engaged, and in which all pieces communicate directly, real-time, with each other without the need to create and maintain any integration. Put simply, the weakness of the best-of-breed solution is that the user company bears the responsibility for integrating all the different solutions together, whereas the integrated solution may not give the user company exactly what they want in each individual department or function.

The Question

The problem that all publishers face is that business needs change all the time! If you do not believe this, consider that thirty years ago, nobody had even heard of Amazon, the internet, Print on Demand, Direct-to-Consumer, cloud, audio content, or mobile computing, and yet each one of these items has had a major impact on how publishers conduct business today. Buckle up – there are more on the way; AI and sustainability to name just two. Business and technology evolve constantly, and this demands perpetual changes in our core operating systems.

Consider this: The most significant cost of your operational systems is the cost of maintaining them over their lifetime. So, the real question is what are the costs of maintaining a best-of-breed solution compared to the cost of maintaining integrated software, and what is the comparative value of each. We come down unequivocally on the side of integrated software. Why?

The Cost of Maintenance and Integration

The cost of maintaining a system portfolio that includes different vendor’s products is the biggest challenge for the best-of-breed choice. Integration must be managed in-house, and it is expensive. Here are a few reasons why a best-of breed portfolio raises these costs:

• There are multiple software vendors’ solutions implemented. This means that the user company needs to deal with keeping the operation stable whenever each vendor delivers release updates, inevitably, on different schedules. If you do not keep each software updated to the latest release, you risk losing support for all the features that you need as technology moves on.
• This means that you need to maintain a well-staffed IT team in-house and keep them well informed in their specialty. In fact, you may need several IT teams, each one focused on a specific vendor’s system. This raises concerns of critical mass for each best-of-breed solution installed and involves technology outside your own business’ core competence.
• You are dealing with several, different coding and user interface standards among the different vendors, adding complexity, cost, and increased numbers of user errors.
• In a typical publisher, there is already plenty of in-house integration to be done in simply importing data from external sources for example. If you add to that, the challenge of keeping best-of-breed components synchronized and updated, it becomes costly and easily skipped. Legacy systems often accumulate in organizations that do not have a standard approach to technology, on a single technology platform. Dealing with several software suppliers adds complexity and cost to IT.
• These factors tend to force the user company into failing to keep all software components updated, which defeats the purpose of outsourcing the software in the first place.

Real-time integration and lower maintenance costs are where the integrated solution excels:

• There are fewer release upgrade synchronization problems because there are fewer vendor solutions installed. There is often only one core vendor. This leads to lower onboarding and training costs. And one standard solution saves money and reduces errors.
• Integrated solutions are typically supplied by major software vendors (e.g., Microsoft and their partner network) that enjoy economies of scale in software development budgets and provide a single technology platform. There are currently over 150,000 implementations of Microsoft Navision and consequently a big development budget. There is safety in scale.
• In the case of Microsoft Dynamics, partner updates such as those from knkMedia are easy to apply (they are extensions that do not modify the core Dynamics code). There is little cost to applying updates and thus a greater incentive for users to apply them.
• In an integrated system, there is one set of standards and one User Interface. (The ubiquitous Microsoft standard). Also, the solution is often outsourced to the cloud, which further reduces the risk of technological obsolescence in IT staff and software.
• The software is managed in one central repository, so every user sees the same data, improving collaboration amongst users. There are no “silos” of information.
• Data security is more easily implemented and managed.
• The integrated software vendor that provides an industry-specific solution (such as knkMedia) includes industry “best practices” that are well defined and understood.

In summary, it is necessary to consider your company’s core competencies. For publishers, these include acquiring, curating, and marketing great content, and do not typically include running a state-of-the art IT organization, equipped with a large, well-trained IT staff. Real-time application integration is a significant part of the solution to creating a smooth user experience for customers, partners, and employees. Our customers need the ability to deploy new functionality and technology inexpensively, to maintain their competitive advantage. An integrated software system helps.