Xerox Content Management Solutions: Success Story

MBS Textbook Exchange

Gets Smart About Business

with Xerox Content

Management Solutions

“ We’re so far ahead of our competition.”

X E R O X O F F I C E S E R V I C E S Real People. Real World Solutions.

Content Management Applications:• Digitize business processes in Systems, Direct, and Wholesale Divisions

• Provide online course materials for students of institutional customers

• Manage technical changes and specifications

Content Management Challenges:• Speed delivery and access to proposals and contracts for 3,000

client bookstores• Provide accurate technical updates for AS/400 Point-of-Sale systems

• Eliminate costly errors

• Make information quickly available to sales reps and customers

• Speed and facilitate interactive content sharing for

distance-learning customers

• Reduce paper clutter

Xerox Content Management Solution:• FlowPort - Xerox Image Routing Software for image capture

and workflow control

• DocuShare - Xerox Document Repository Software for document

management, storage, and retrieval

MBS Textbook Exchange Benefits:• Competitive advantage

• 24 x 7 access to information by MBS Textbook Exchangestaff and clients

• Time saving and better workflow control• Reduced costs

• Better ability to meet deadlines

MBS Textbook Exchange

Summary

“Delivering our products on time is crucial to our business,” says

Flanagan. “In the past we were always getting the customers’ input

materials late. Now they can get materials to us on their schedule.

They just drop their documents into DocuShare folders, and our DocuTechs

print the materials. Everything flows so much more efficiently through

our systems now, and costly back ordering has been eliminated.”

As of January 2002, the Direct Division will give students the option of

digital delivery of course packs versus hardcopy documents, allowing

a reduction in cost for those who prefer receiving their course materials

in electronic form.

With Xerox Content Management Solutions, “We are so far ahead of our

competition,” Flanagan concludes. “That’s why we chose DocuShare

and FlowPort – they were unique products that no other vendor offered.”

“There were files and paper everywhere.Nobody knew where anything was – and ifsomebody was out sick and had locked theirdesk, forget it!”

Dennis Flanagan

Executive Vice President, Corporate Marketing

and New Business Development

MBS Textbook Exchange

Columbia, Missouri

SummaryMBS Textbook Exchange Benefits

C U S T O M E R P R O F I L E

Columbia, Missouri-based MBS Textbook Exchange is the nation’s largest

supplier of new and used textbooks to college bookstores. The company

traces its roots to 1909 and a shelf at the University of Missouri coffee

shop where students exchanged used texts. Soon, the Missouri Store

Company was selling books and classroom supplies to schools throughout

the state. By the 1920’s, the company began to wholesale textbooks

nationally – a business which grew until, by the end of the century, it

was supplying textbooks to approximately 3,000 higher-education clients.

Today, what remains of the original retail business is the Wholesale

Division. MBS Textbook Exchange includes two additional units to serve

special needs of the academic market. The Direct Division supplies

distance-learning colleges and universities with online customized

packaging of books and “course packs” – collections of special materials,

articles, and reprints selected to supplement texts for specific classes.

In addition, through its Systems Division the company sells and

services computer-based point-of-sale systems designed for

academic bookstores.T H E C O N T E N T M A N A G E M E N T C

H A L L E N G E

The rapid business growth spawned by the addition of the Direct and

Systems Divisions brought an urgent need for effective computer and

web-based content management tools. Old ways of handling documents

and workflow were simply not productive. Dennis Flanagan, Executive

Vice President, Corporate Marketing and New Business Development,

describes that era’s hardcopy world as “like living out of a shoebox –

with files everywhere and paper everywhere.”

The Direct Division, for example, was producing and shipping tens of

thousands of course packs per year, requiring a massive hardcopy

scanning and distribution operation. “With our large volume of input,

not every page would scan correctly, so we sometimes ended up with

errors and missing pages in our documents, which was a huge productivity

barrier,” Flanagan remembers.

In the Systems Division, the need for a more efficient workflow was

equally urgent. “Our business was growing, and we were running out

of room to put all of our paper documents,” recalls Lois Ahrens, Systems

Marketing Representative. “We have a variety of spreadsheets that

track things internally, and people needed instant access to them. Most

importantly, our marketing reps, who sell our IBM AS/400-based point-

of-sale systems to bookstores, needed to have the very latest information

on models, configurations, and features. Technical information changes

regularly. Updating our reps and customers by e-mail, fax, or snail mail

was much too cumbersome and slow.”

MBS Textbook Exchange Benefits

Xerox Content Management Solutions have added significant value

throughout MBS Textbook Exchange. In the Wholesale Division, the

firm’s traditional business and largest revenue generator, FlowPort -

Xerox Image Routing Software and DocuShare - Xerox Document

Repository Software provide an orderly way of managing the firm’s

proposals and contracts with bookstores – contracts which represent

vital business relationships with some 3,000 customers.

“We’ve set up ‘Virtual Bookstores’ – folders in DocuShare – for each of

our clients. They just ‘drag and drop’ their electronic document from

their desktop to the DocuShare folder,” reports Flanagan.

The Systems Division now uses DocuShare to manage the flow of

technical updates for the point-of-sale computer systems they sell.

And in the Direct Division, DocuShare helps manage the production and

sale of course packs for a half-million students in 300 schools.

DocuShare’s capacity to manage documents and workflow has ushered

in a powerful new way of content management that is both more orderly

and more expansive. “From our customers’ standpoint, DocuShare

makes doing business with us very easy,” says Flanagan.

In addition to benefiting MBS Textbook Exchange customers, Xerox

Content Management Solutions have driven down costs and improved

efficiencies throughout the company’s internal operations. “We were

digging up files and faxing them to someone else who needed them,”

recalls Lois Ahrens. “ Now, DocuShare puts that knowledge where they

can get it themselves, 24 hours a day.”

“I used to have to make 20 copies ofeverything and mail them. Now, I simplyscan one signed copy. FlowPort directs

it where it needs to go, and whoeverneeds the contract can go to DocuShare

and retrieve it.”

Tammy Banks

Administrative Assistant,

Wholesale Division

MBS Textbook Exchange

Columbia, Missouri

MBS Textbook Exchange Gets Smart About Business with Xerox Content Management Solutions

C U S T O M E R P R O F I L ECustomer Profile H A L L E N G EThe Content Management Challenge

MBS Textbook Exchange BenefitsMBS Textbook Exchange Benefits

X E R O X O F F I C E S E R V I C E S

Success Story