1

(Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort, collecting

society of authors – http://www.vgwort.de/

international/information-in-english.html). A

decision on this matter was postponed by the

BGH (Federal Court of Justice) to April 2016

due to a “harmonization” with the EuGH

(European Court of Justice). In a ruling on 17

October 2013, the Oberlandesgericht (Higher

Regional Court) in Munich determined that

collecting societies are no longer allowed to

In this issue, we would like to brief you on Klopotek’s activities

over the past few months, our near-term plans and, of course,

the software enhancements in our current patch. As always,

feel free to contact us for further details.

Interview with Klaus-Peter Stegen ..... 1 Klopotek Analytics powered by Pentaho ........................... 3

Server donation to OSZIMT ................ 3 Patch News Spring 2016 .................. 3 Our new company brochure ............... 3

Last Chance: Don’t miss the Publishers’ Forum ................................ 4

Rights sales in ChicagoVisit us! ................................................. 4

“How do we make our customers’ work flow as efficient and transparent as possible? This thinking is at the core of Klopotek’s development philosophy”

CUSTOMER INFO NO. 1 | 2016

I N T H I S I S S U E

Dear Readers,

Kind regards, Petra Steinfeld

The Classification Manager enables editorial, sales, and marketing users to identify the relevant categories easily and to classify their products.

Petra Steinfeld, Director, Klopotek & Partner GmbH

Klaus-Peter, as a board member of Klopotek

AG, you are responsible for the German, Aus-

trian and Swiss markets. What is your view of

2016 for German speaking publishers?

Publishers are facing a number of challenges

and uncertainties in 2016, especially in

Germany. Let me just mention the keywords

‘Urheberrechtsnovellierung’ (copyright law

amendment) and, specifically, ‘VG Wort’

Interview with Klaus-Peter Stegen, Chairman of the Managing Board, Klopotek & Partner GmbH

2

CUSTOMER INFO NO. 1 | 2016

provide publishers with a share in their dis-

tributions, and that these societies also have

to reclaim payments made in previous years.

Publishers are finding themselves confronted

with the prospect that a long established

source of income may disappear.

Things are becoming more challenging in

other areas, as well. This can be attributed in

part to the increase in self-published product.

The most widely read tabloid ‘BILD-Zeitung’,

for example, publishes the Amazon bestseller

list, not taking into account whether a tradi-

tional publisher or a self-publisher’s e-book

stands behind the product. This intensifies

the pressure on publishing companies and

their products.

Klopotek consider themselves a “partner in

publishing‘. How does Klopotek support the

book and journal publishing industries?

One of the keys to our success has been our

closeness to the market – we make every ef-

fort to anticipate and understand significant

industry developments and help our custom-

ers adapt It is, of course, impossible for us to

influence the legal or judicial landscape but

we can and do employ our process expertise

to support our customers to manage these

changes.

Can you share some examples of how

Klopotek does this?

The New York State Supreme Court has

recently handed down a ruling on flat-rate

royalty payments, which is particularly rel-

evant for textbooks which have been created

by several authors. This ruling was been

followed with great interest in Germany,

because of concerns of recovery claims by au-

thors or the possible loss of long-standing au-

thor relationships. Klopotek CR&R (Contracts,

Rights & Royalties) module provides a market

leading solution that reliably processes com-

plex royalty rules and ensures compliance.

When discussing author loyalty and satisfac-

tion, our Authors Online solution comes to

mind immediately as solution which provides

unprecedented transparency to royalty

information. Authors’ Online version 2.0

is currently available and also runs on our

cloud-based STREAM platform, enabling

authors to conveniently access their royalty

statements via Internet.

Authors Online can also provide detailed

transaction history as well as drill-down

options. In addition to the benefits from

increased transparency, Authors Online offers

publishers the opportunity to reduce their

costs for printed statements by providing

their authors with an on-line and down-

loadable alternative to print. This offers the

publisher opportunities to reduce the costs

of traditional royalty statements – offer-

ing potential significant savings in postage,

paper, and above all – man power.

With the right process expertise, publishers

can also make progress in areas that incur

costs – such as royalty write-off. One of our

customers has been using the Klopotek solu-

tion to create “added value” by significantly

reducing the write off rate with a maximum

degree of transparency, while the underly-

ing process rather served planning control

purposes. Compare: www.klopotek.de in the

section ‚Case Studies‘.

Another example is our STREAM web app

Classification Manager which can help

publishers to secure Gold status in VLB

(Verzeichnis Lieferbarer Bücher, the directory

of German books in print) and pay reduced

registration fees. Most importantly, Classifica-

tion Manager enables publishers to create

classifications in compliance with the ‘Thema’

standard. This makes it easier to classify titles

by subject matter, a process which offers

significant opportunities to increase sales by

reaching target customers with more preci-

sion.

Similarly, Rights Sales Manager, another

STREAM web app, will be focal point for us

at Book Expo America in Chicago this spring.

This application offers publishers a clear and

consolidated view of their available rights

inventory as well as the ability to track the

status of all pending sales opportunities.

What is the most important Klopotek

product in 2016?

We will continue to focus on developing

both our Classic Line and the cloud-based

Klopotek STREAM platform. We are commit-

ted to continuing our investments to make

publisher workflows efficient, nimble, and

transparent. This philosophy is at the core of

Klopotek’s business strategy. Best practices

and process optimization is what we offer to

our customers.

The perfect tool for classifying products according to inter-national standards: web app Classification Manager

3

CUSTOMER INFO NO. 1 | 2016

integrated reports with a clearly visualized,

interactive data display. Use Klopotek Ana-

lytics Premium to create complex analysis and

individual dashboards. Both SQL and NoSQL

databases can be used as data sources. Please

contact us for details or visit our website

(‘STREAM’ section).

Publishers now have the opportunity to

further leverage the data they manage in

Klopotek. Our newest reporting tool, Klo-

potek Analytics offers publishers the ability

to view strategic, mission-critical informa-

tion with unprecedented clarity. Klopotek

Analytics Advanced offers state-of-the-art,

Klopotek Analytics … powered by

Important business process rules easily configurable in Klopotek

If, for example, new tax regulations come into force in a country, the tax rules

defined in the Klopotek system can be easily modified. The Klopotek software

uses business rules management systems, such as Drools (http://www.drools.

org), which make it possible to modify rules via configuration rather than

reprogramming. Please contact us if you would like to learn more.

The tax routine is one of the central aspects in patch 1/16.

Company group-specific accounting calendars

The royalty statement can use the standard calendar months as financial

periods for the statement or it can use financial periods defined by the system

administrator. The financial period assignment is based on the date a product

was sold. With Version 11.0, accounting calendars can be defined for each

company group.

...

Patch News Spring 2016

Server donation to OSZIMT

In February 2016, Klopotek

donated servers to the Berlin

College of Further Education

for Information Technology

and Medical Equipment Tech-

nology (Oberstufenzentrum

Informations- und Mediz-

intechnik (OSZ IMT)) which

offers courses in the fields

of general education, dual

Gabriela Kämmler (Head of Electrical Engineering) and Hans Hornschu (Head of the Technical Documentation Depart-ment) of OSZIMT with the servers donated by Klopotek.

Did you already know about our new company brochure?Ask us about it!

vocational training, full-time school-based

vocational training, and continuing educa-

tion and qualification programs.

This is Klopotek’s third donation to the Berlin

College, which offers individuals with an

interest in (further) education a wide range

of possibilities to expand their knowledge

in either information or medical equipment

technology

CUSTOMER INFO NO. 1 | 2016

Patch News Spring 2016

Here are three highlights (among many):

Digital Education (in cooperation with the

Börsenverein [German Publishers and

Booksellers Association]): the discussion

will cover a wide range of topics including

content digitization, adaptive learning,

learning communities as well as the chal-

lenges of new publishing processes

Publishing in the Arab world: fireside chat

with publisher and pioneer Sheikha Bodour

Al Qasimi, Board Member of the Interna-

tional Publishers‘ Association

New Disruptive Contexts for (Book) Pub-

lishing: Audiences. Markets. Platforms.

Regulations. – discussion with Peter Brant-

ley, UC Davis Library at UC Davis / Books in

Browsers, USA; Marguerite Joly, Ullstein,

GER; David Worlock, Outsell, UK

The new location dbb forum berlin in Fried-

richstrasse will contribute to this event with

its bright and clear look & feel.

Register now: http://publishersforum.de/

registration-forum-2016

Our speakers: http://publishersforum.de/

speakers-2016/

Last Chance: Don’t miss the Publishers’ Forum

FAB: shipping/invoice date configurable

The ‘BSD Invoicing (FAB)’ batch procedure in the Klopotek ‘Order to Cash’ distribu-

tion system for one-off transactions processes orders received during the business

day in an overnight batch run. If multiple orders are created for a customer during

in a single day, they are invoiced together and where possible are combined into

one shipment, reducing time and effort in the warehouse.

The documents resulting from this process are created with the next business day

as the shipping / invoice date. The current date is used as the invoicing date for the

hours from midnight to 6:00 a.m.

In order to improve automatic control of warehouse work processes, with Version

10.8 you can define the time parameters for which the current date should be used

as the invoicing/shipping date via a system setting . For example, if shipments are

sent to a customer\, on a Saturday, another system setting can be used to display

Saturday or Sunday as the actual shipping / invoice date on the order documents.

Customer (BSD): show special discounts

In the Klopotek ‚Order to Cash’ distribution system for one-off transactions, pub-

lishers can manage the special discounts established for a specific customer in the

‘Customer (BSD)’ module, on the ‘Special Disc.’ tab. The ‘Show Special Discounts’

icon is available with Version 10.8 to provide an overview of all of a customer’s

special discounts. The system displays the special discounts as a table in the cor-

responding ‘Show Special Discounts’ window. You can manually modify the table

view (group, sort, move and hide/show columns). The modified view is saved for

each user. You can also generate a CSV file with data for the special discounts from

the table view to be used for further processing in external systems.

Make split panes superfluous using drag and drop

Within the context of GUI optimization, a drag and drop function is now available

as an alternative to working with split panes. Simply drag one or more data items

that you wish to transfer to the relevant tab. If you move your cursor over the tab,

a window opens where you can drop your data items.

We invite you to a visit at our booth 972A at

this year‘s Book Expo America (11 – 13 May).

‘Rights Sales Manager’, which runs on the

cloud-based technology platform Klopotek

STREAM, will be the focal point for the show.

This web app provides you with critical title,

author and rights data. If a misstep occurs,

the web app issues a warning and intuitively

guides the user through the entire sales

workflow through the completion of the

sale.

Rights sales in Chicago – Visit us!

4© Klopotek 2016 www.klopotek.de