After 25 years in business, Virtusales is stronger than ever with record profits and a growing customer base. From a small family business to a global operation, the company has continued to evolve to meet the needs of publishers and, as a result, has seen phenomenal growth. Over the last three years, the company has grown 70 percent. What's the secret sauce? We caught up with CEO Philip Turner to find out.
Congratulations on celebrating 25 years in business! Over the past quarter century, what would you say has been the biggest change in or challenge to your company?
The biggest change has been growing from a tiny family-run business of two living and working in a small seaside flat in Brighton, U.K., to a market-leading software company of more than 100 staff based in several countries and supporting some of the biggest names in publishing.
There have been many challenges along the way, but all have centered on staying at the leading edge of publishing systems. In technology that has meant upgrading the system multiple times, and then with so much change in the industry, we’ve needed to adapt Biblio to provide functionality that deals with modern-day publishing.
Changes in the regulatory landscape have meant we’ve not only had to continually update our software and services but also our processes. We're constantly investing in technology like artificial intelligence, APIs, user-friendly dashboards, integrated portals, advanced search capabilities, and state-of-the-art hosting facilities as well as meeting the demands of world-leading publishers requiring ISO and SOC certification. Passing our audits each year is of paramount importance to us as it reflects the level of responsibility we have not only to innovate but also to run our ongoing business to the highest standards.
Of course, Covid-19, Brexit, industry shifts including changing buyer habits, the digital revolution and its effect on proliferation of products and licensing, and the challenges of mergers and acquisitions are additional, more specific challenges to growing the business profitably and sustainably. Over our lifetime, we've lost several independents to acquisitions by larger publishers. Fortunately, this has led to projects with their acquirers.
One of our biggest challenges came when our two largest customers of the time, Penguin UK and Random House UK, merged. This created short-term uncertainty, especially as the combined revenue was such a large share of our total income. Subsequent decisions to invest further in Biblio and merge both systems, though, made us a stronger business and created the platform to grow and thrive. Since then, revenues are up by almost four times and the number of customers has increased by three times, all despite losing independents through acquisitions.
Taken together, the biggest challenge may be delivering the agility, responsiveness, and flexibility needed to implement some of the biggest software projects in publishing with a personal, caring approach. And while this might be our biggest challenge, it has witnessed the least change. This attitude and approach over 25 years has allowed us to grow year on year, building strong relationships and achieving record revenue and profits this year, having grown 70 percent over the past three fantastic years. This performance stands as a testament to our relentless drive to keep all the moving parts in harmony.
How has Virtusales grown and expanded into new areas over the past 25 years?
In the beginning, we offered a small web-based, prototype title management solution, but this was quickly followed by a large-scale project for Random House UK, which expanded Biblio’s title management capabilities to handle acquisitions, production management, scheduling, contracts and subrights, as well as fully integrating it into back-end finance and warehouse systems. Random House then recommended Biblio to Faber, Walker Books, Virgin Books, and many others, establishing Virtusales within UK trade publishing.
Our breakthrough into the U.S. came with a joint Walker Books and Candlewick Press project, which also brought in Walker Books Australia. At the same time, we implemented Biblio for Random House Australia/New Zealand, launching our global journey into trade publishing. Today, the U.S. is a significant part of our global revenue with our North American business, having grown 280 percent over the past three years.
After Biblio’s success within Random House, the publisher commissioned Virtusales to build a publishing-specific digital asset management (DAM) system, which centralized all assets across the business. Unlike generic DAM solutions, we built this new DAM to handle the specific workflows of global publishing, especially the nuances of printing in China, which in 2007 had infrastructure challenges. Production workflows was the central theme and, today, our DAM has been expanded to become a central and fully integrated part of all publishing workflows in Biblio, including storing and distributing royalties statements to feed Biblio’s royalties portal.
We expanded our understanding—and Biblio’s capabilities—of handling complex licensing deals and logistical challenges through a project for Penguin involving its sibling Dorling Kindersley, which had many offices worldwide. The project also involved building a new inventory management system, replacing a legacy system, to automate and modernize stock management. At the same time, we completed the first major technology upgrade of Biblio to Microsoft's .Net and rolled this out to all customers as a normal free upgrade.
Virtusales moved into academic publishing through a project for Harvard University Press, and now we have 30 university press customers in several countries. At the same time as rolling out to Harvard we implemented Biblio for Bloomsbury who, mid-project bought Continuum and our first project handling both Trade and Academic publishing on a single system supporting numerous countries was established.
Concurrently with this project, we were building a new state of the art, fully integrated, Contracts, Rights and Royalties system with Random House, which then expanded to Penguin, DK and other PRH businesses in UK, Australia and South Africa following the merger.
More recently, Virtusales implemented Project Beagle, which completely reengineered Biblio’s architecture, adding a modern suite of APIs, ElasticSearch, and a fresh Google Angular user interface. Following this, our new AI Lab has begun to roll out artificial intelligence solutions including AI-generated keywords along with other solutions and is in the process of building an AI Bot to support users and our customer services team with the latest generation of support functions.
Other recent projects with Disney Publishing Worldwide expanded our reach in global licensing, while enhancements for Macmillan USA, HarperCollins USA, MIT Press, Oetinger and Cornelsen in Germany, Aschehoug Forlag in Scandinavia and many other iterative strategic developments, have all added important new functionality to the core system as standard upgrades, which we have been rolling out to our customer base in the course of their normal upgrade path.
All of this development means that publishers no longer need to heavily customize their back-end SAP or other ERP systems at huge cost or integrate small-scale, uncertified, tactical solutions into their robust financial and logistics operations and landscape.
Biblio has evolved into a modern, truly multi-country, multi-currency/weights/measures publishing management system that integrates the end-to-end workflows of trade publishers worldwide. It's a proven global workflow management system providing a “single version of the truth” for all publishing data, digital files and assets for the world’s largest trade and academic publishers.
How do you see Virtusales evolving over the next 25 years?
I believe our strong ethos and partnership approach will continue to position Virtusales at the heart of publishing worldwide. We will evolve our functionality by changing current practices and building new ones, which we will do on the same collaborative development methodology. Virtusales will continue to be a deep domain supplier in publishing, and as publishing expands into new areas, so will Biblio.
In-house artificial intelligence applications will help us to achieve one of our biggest future challenges, which is to continue to build new functionality that is highly configurable to any type of publisher, genre, or location. With this in mind, the AI journey has only just begun.
BiblioSuite has been called the “single source of truth” for information about a title or content. Can you explain what you mean by this exactly and the importance of this capability for publishers?
While spreadsheets and documents are still used to run publishing processes and there has been a proliferation of modern software solutions dealing with generic business problems such as scheduling, task management and CRM, and so on, publishers who implement these often find data becomes fragmented and inconsistent. By handling the core publishing functions comprehensively, Biblio keeps the core metadata in a central place and important Biblio functionality enforces business rules and data integrity to ensure that this data can always be trusted as the single truth. From this central place, feeds are set up to automatically populate other databases, websites, and platforms, and when any changes happen, Biblio gets updated and resends the updates to the tens or hundreds of places the data is needed.
What sets Virtusales and BiblioSuite apart from other services, and how has that contributed to the company’s success over the past 25 years?
Firstly, BiblioSuite is continuously evolving, thanks to ongoing collaborations with an engaged community of publishers. Our platform adapts to pressing challenges by releasing new upgrades containing new features and support for industry standards, which we roll out as part of our services at no additional cost.
Our commitment to collaborative community engagement is another key differentiator, and our active participation in major publishing events like the London and Frankfurt Book Fairs, Redux, ALPSP, SSP, and AUP keeps us closely connected with the industry's evolving needs. Through our global community program, BiblioU, we foster collaboration across the publishing sector, encouraging innovation through shared knowledge and experiences.
Another standout feature is our approach to implementation. We do not rely on third-party implementers, ensuring project consistency and deepening our partnerships with clients. Many on our team have publishing backgrounds and bring insider knowledge that is invaluable when tailoring solutions to meet the specific challenges faced by our clients.
Finally, BiblioSuite is product-agnostic, capable of managing any product and content types—whether digital, print, hybrid, pack, group, or individual items. This versatility is complemented by deep-domain functionalities for each product category, ensuring efficient and streamlined capture of metadata, digital files, and images needed for core workflow activities.
How might emerging technologies shape current key trends in the industry, and how can Biblio contribute to this evolution?
Emerging technologies like AI are set to dramatically reshape the industry. Artificial intelligence's ability to offer personalized content delivery, better targeting, instant access, and seamless payment solutions will transform the reader experience. Anticipated developments include e-books featuring interactive elements such as video, audio, and gaming, fostering immersive engagements. Publishers are investing in advanced technologies that offer new features, including dashboards and AI solutions, to streamline workflows and comply with industry regulations like GPSR, EUDR, and EAA.
Biblio can play a pivotal role in this evolution. By integrating these technological advancements into its platform, Biblio offers publishers the tools to capitalize on new formats and delivery methods while ensuring compliance with emerging regulations. As a leading provider, Biblio can also support publishers in navigating the shift toward inclusivity and sustainability by offering resources and solutions tailored to these priorities. Through continual innovation, Biblio can help publishers remain at the forefront of industry change, maximizing new opportunities and enhancing operational efficiencies.
