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UK Schools the Morning After: A Year and a Half After Government Cuts, Part I
Nelson B. Heller, President, The HellerResults Group — Friday, February 10, 2012
I spent four days wandering around last month’s massive BETT conference in London. In many senses, BETT is the world’s largest K-12 educational technology expo. (It’s called educational ICT in the UK, and much of the non-U.S. world, for information and communications technology.) Started 27 years ago with a domestic focus to help bootstrap UK schools and teachers into 21st century learning, it’s since become increasingly international. In May of 2010, the UK’s new Conservative-Liberal coalition government shook up both the nation’s schools and educational resources industry by dismantling the Blair/Labor administration’s long-standing support for educational technology. Given what’s happened to UK schools, the majority of which get almost all their funding from the Ministry of Education, the atmosphere was surprisingly upbeat. There’re intriguing parallels between the UK’s new situation and policy movements here in the U.S., including an explosion in their equivalent of charter schools, removal of earmarks for funding going to schools (so they can spend it as they see fit), and a devolution of spending power back down to the building level. From my perspective, the UK experience offers an advance view of what we might be experiencing here over the next couple of years. This first of a two-article series details the changes in the school market a year and a half into the new regime. The second article, to appear next month, looks at how some UK firms are responding to the changes. Life is very different but not all bad. Read on to see if you agree. Read More »
International Face Time: ePals’ Miles Gilburne on China and Beyond, Part II
Nelson B. Heller, President, HellerResults — Friday, January 13, 2012
In day-to-day business, focused mainly on domestic sales, we tend not to notice the tectonic shifts in the education market taking place globally. I mentioned in my “Catbird” presentation at last September’s EdNET Conference, there’s now at least one education firm in China with a market valuation of over $4 billion and one in India easily over $1 billion. While their ripples have barely reached the U.S. market they, and other fast-growing firms around the world, tell us that education is increasingly a global business. In this article, the second in a series based on conversations with Miles Gilburne, CEO of ePals, Gilburne shares further insights into doing business internationally. Read why Gilburne asserts that for a firm like ePals, whose products live in the cloud and relate to communication and collaboration skills, the Internet is making international sales critical to its future. Then check out his strategic and tactical insights to see how well they fit your own firm. Read More »
International Face Time: ePals’ Miles Gilburne on China and Beyond, Part I
Nelson B. Heller, President, HellerResults — Friday, December 02, 2011
Education publishers have always had an interest in international markets. Now cloud computing; rising affluence in countries like Brazil, China, and India; mobile learning platforms; and a host of other market drivers are accelerating the globalization of education, creating new opportunities and threats. At September’s EdNET Conference, I spoke about this in my View From the Catbird Seat presentation, “Over There: Rockets and Giants.” In this article and others to follow, we’ll look at what’s changing about the international markets and how some savvy firms are responding. Read More »
Getting Them to Use It: The Critical Roles of Implementation Planning, Leadership and Change Management
Nelson B. Heller, President, HellerResults — Friday, October 28, 2011
This third article concludes our recent series on how to get customers happily and productively engaged in using the products they or their organizations have acquired. It pulls together insights from conversations with a number of senior industry executives about how their organizations work to make it happen, a top priority for customer retention and, by way of brand and reputation, new customer acquisition as well. Read More »
Getting Them to Use It: Marshalling Customer Service, Social Support, Product Design and Updates, and User Incentives
Nelson B. Heller, President, EdNET, MDR — Friday, September 23, 2011
Keeping your customers happy and engaged are clearly on the critical path to retention and, by way of reputation and brand, to new customer acquisition. In last month’s Heller Report column, Getting Them to Use It: After the Sale, Keeping Customers Happy, we shared the insights of senior industry executives about how usage is being impacted by market trends and how they define and measure usage, use training and professional development, and calibrate by price point to tune their usage promotion strategies. In today’s column, we look at marshalling customer service, social support, product design and updates, and user incentives for customer retention and acquisition. In next month’s column, we will conclude the series with this group’s insights on the critical roles of leadership (especially change management) and implementation planning. Satisfied, active customers are no accident. Read on to score your own firm’s usage promotion strategies against the ideas of these veterans. Read More »
Getting Them to Use It: After the Sale, Keeping Customers Happy
Nelson B. Heller, President, EdNET, MDR — Friday, August 26, 2011
Over the past year, in chats with many of you, I’ve became acutely aware of how critical it is for you to have satisfied customers actively engaged with your products and how, even with excellent product and support, making it happen is no small undertaking. In this Heller Report article and two more to follow, I’ve pulled together insights and actionable tactics from a number of industry executives very much concerned with this issue for their firms. You can probably guess the list of factors they’ve highlighted. In this article, we look at market trends, defining and measuring usage, training and professional development, and price point. In the subsequent pieces, we’ll look at customer service, social support, product design and updates, user incentives, leadership (especially change management), and implementation planning. It’s no understatement to say that “getting them to use it” is critical to the health of your business. It’s not just about customer retention either. How you do this has a major impact on customer acquisition too. Read on to see if you agree. Read More »
K-12 Textbook Rental: Wild Card Stalking Horse for the Digital Future
Nelson B. Heller, President, EdNET, MDR — Friday, July 29, 2011
In the last two Heller Report columns, we have been looking at the remarkable traction textbook rental has achieved in higher education and its early migration to the K-12 market, predominantly in private and parochial high schools. The big money, if it is to be had, will be in public K-12 institutions, and there are beginning signs of interest. A few states, Indiana in the forefront, have legislated K-12 textbook rental, but Indiana’s funding model, based on a six-year book life cycle, discourages commerce. Read More »
K-12 Textbook Rental: Post-Secondary Success Drives Into New Territory
Nelson B. Heller, President, EdNET, MDR — Friday, July 01, 2011
The serious traction obtained by post-secondary market textbook renters, outlined in last month’s Heller Report column, has generated a number of similar initiatives in K-12. The low-hanging fruit is in private and parochial high schools, but the serious money, if it happens, will be in public school districts where it is just starting to get some uptake. Firms with K-12 rental footprints include Follett Virtual Bookstores, BookRenter.com, College Book Renter, FindersCheapers.com, and Budgetext. In both post-secondary and K-12, the biggest market driver is the cost of textbooks. Because cost is one of the issues in used and eBooks, what’s happening in book rental also sheds some light on where the K-12 market’s going for these alternatives to traditional books. Read on to see if you agree that for K-12 what’s happening here is about more than just getting books into students’ hands. Read More »
Textbook Rental: Web-Rejuvenation Rocks Post-Secondary Market
Nelson B. Heller, President, EdNET, MDR — Friday, June 03, 2011
The Rental Phenomenon...In the past two years, the post-secondary textbook rental market has exploded. Driven by the outcry over book prices, federal legislation, readily available pricing information on the Internet, and sophisticated web-based rental management platforms, old and new competitors are disrupting the $10 billion college textbook business. Book rental isn’t really a new phenomenon—a few college stores have been renting books since the Civil War. The National Association of College Stores (NACS) proclaimed fall 2010 as the “Year of the Rental.” Players include long-timers like Follett and Budgetext and fast-growing start-ups. BookRenter, started in 2008, netted $40 million from investors in a funding round this past February. Chegg, started in 2007, has raised $200+ million in venture capital and attracted senior management from Yahoo and Netflix. The same drivers are growing trade in used books, eBooks, and online instructional content. Rental is also driving new business models for sourcing and distributing educational materials that may carry the industry forward into digital. Having book inventory isn’t necessarily required—at least one high-flying firm, BookRenter, exists mainly as an online marketplace. Read on to see how this change in distribution is impacting the higher education market. Next month we’ll look at what all this means for K-12. Read More »
Navigating the Downturn: Making It Work
Nelson B. Heller, President, EdNET, MDR — Friday, May 06, 2011
The K-12 market is sending mixed signals about whether we’ve managed to dodge the bullets ravaging school budgets across the land. Less than a year ago, I explored the recession’s impact with Navigating the Downturn: Is Pricing Pressure Driving Supplemental Sales? (April 16, 2010), Countering Pricing Pressure (May 14, 2010), and Does Proof of Efficacy Matter Anymore? (June 11, 2010). Triggered by a recent inquiry from an industry acquaintance, I decided it was time to have another look, and on April 8, 2011, after reaching out to over a dozen industry contacts to get their readings, I wrote Navigating the Downturn: Are We There Yet? I found both optimism and pessimism in exploring why we might be at a significant turning point now and where we go from here. In this article, I share what I heard about whether the changes are temporary or whether we’re entering “a new normal,” what kinds of products are getting a boost from the downturn, and how companies are changing the way they do business. Remember, this isn’t based on a statistically significant sample but does give you a glimpse of what others in the industry are thinking. Read on to gauge what this might mean for you. Read More »
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