Strategy

This is the big one, deciding how to "steer the ship" in this changing world of ever-faster-change and divergent digital opportunities. There are dozens of questions and you want experienced counsel to help arrive at informed responses which will yield the results you seek. How do you position yourself for these new challenges and markets? What new products should be developed? Which new markets present the greatest opportunity? What new business models should you evaluate? Which should you pursue? What organizational changes are required for you to succeed? How do you effect the change within the group as well as externally in the marketplace?

Sales & Marketing

There's an old saying "nothing happens until somebody sells something." You've got a great idea or even a great product or service. How do you package it? How do you introduce it to your customers? How do you determine which should be your target customers? Where/how do you build the people and/or processes needed to turn this product/service into the success you envision? It takes serious effort and prodigious experience to turn the wishful into the actual and this is part of the skill set you'll find at DDC.

Workflow

New tools and new partners change how we get things done. How do we optimize our core business functions? What can be done to enhance the productivity and efficiency required to make our products and business run, such as editorial, production, marketing, working with channel partners? What new tools can be used to drive cost savings and process improvements? How do we streamline our operations to make them the lean organization we need to become in today's ever-challenging environment? We are constantly working to find and present these tools and improvements to our clients.

Outsourcing

We were among the pioneers running outsourcing operations. At one time we ran a publishing operation employing over 1,500 people.

You need a better approach than what we see with many companies; i.e. "just throw it over the wall to XYZ company." There are so many challenges, nuances and questions when it comes to outsourcing strategies and implementation. At the most basic, how do you choose from the thousands of firms which seemingly sound alike? What can you do to retain your competitive edge and instill your culture and ethics? How much of the editorial tasks can be outsourced—and should they be? How much technology is involved and who will own it when the project is complete? What happens if you're not happy and need to switch to a different team?

Today, we have evolved our recommendations of outsourcing to the "team task" model. In this innovative arrangement, we establish dedicated teams as extensions of your organization. These can be captive resources for a long-term project or even a quick one-off exercise. The important thing to remember is our goal: that these teams shall function as a seamless extension of your organization. This provides the greatest leverage of our time and effort.

DDC can help you with the complete spectrum of any outsourcing task: we analyze the goals and tasks which need to be accomplished, help establish the workflow and bring you partners to effectively execute these goals using this "team-task" model, becoming a virtual yet essential addition to your workforce.

Digital Product Development & Marketing

We are long past the movement from print to digital. The real question is now "which digital products do we create?"

With so many markets, sub-specialties, tools, platforms, channels and new players, ideas, business models starting every day, where will the new growth come from? What will be the driver for your new sales initiatives? What kinds of product do we create? Which have the best prospect for our success and how do we best pursue them? How do we iterate quickly with agile product development? How do we get an MVP (minimum viable product) out there quickly, learn what works and what our audiences want? How do we build and manage these various products and audiences efficiently and profitably?

We Understand Your Business

It is certainly easy to find consultants with a specialty in one or two publishing domains, such as Trade or STM. Makes perfect sense, after all, many people who have spent years in a career track within one domain will strike out on their own and consult.

What is very uncommon however (and a strategic edge for you) is to work with people who have deep experience in virtually all the publishing domains and across many different marketplaces around the globe.

Thanks to our unique background of working with publishers, retailers, service companies in multiple geographic markets, we can offer you a background in virtually every domain, such as Trade, STM, Professional, Scholarly, K-12, Higher Education... as well as the sub-specialties within each of those. What other domains can you address? With whom can you partner to establish new revenue streams and expand your business?

Global Outlook

The world has become both flatter and smaller. Spending the last 4 years building e-commerce digital businesses with established partners in global emerging marketplaces gives us a unique perspective on the nuances and prospects for different kinds of products in various markets. Who are the players? Who are the partners? What would work where? How do you pursue the possibilities and maximize the potential?

Production

At the heart of every company is the production effort; somehow, you usually have to prepare and actually produce something people will eventually buy. Some of us remember wax galleys, others the advent of desktop publishing and we are of course a long way off from those original improvements. No longer can you just throw your production over the wall to some outsourced company; that is tantamount to doing it in-house albeit at a slightly lower cost.

Today when your company has been transformed into a "content producer" and your products are required in various formats even today (and new uses tomorrow), how can you accomplish all this cost-effectively? How is this done while providing improvements for your current revenue streams?

It takes a deep understanding of editorial, workflow, production, outsourcing as well as keeping on top of emerging new tools and processes to match your requirements to what is available and will provide the best outcomes.