Case Studies

Web Development and Hosting Service Helps Facts On File News Services Generate More Than Half of Revenue Online

Since contracting with a Web partner to move its information services online, Facts On File News Services now generates more than 50 percent of its revenue from products that didn't exist several years ago. "Moving to the Internet was crucial for our company because our print and CD sales were declining," says Dennis Labeau, technical director of Facts On File. "Since making our information available online, not only have we added new sources of revenue, sales of our print products have also increased because of the additional exposure." Rather than doing the Web development and hosting a Web site themselves, Facts On File used the services of IHS Enterprise Solutions, Englewood, Colorado. "They have done an outstanding job in transferring all the unique features our products to the Web environment," Labeau adds. "IHS helped make our online experience a huge success."

Facts On File News Services, New York, has been source of reference information for professional researchers and education since 1940 when the Facts On File Weekly World News Digest was founded to serve the information needs of the broadcast news industry. This publication quickly became the most authoritative record of current events information for public, college, and high school libraries. In addition to presenting a concise, clearly written version of events, the information in this publication is trusted for its accuracy. Every fact in a Facts On File article has been verified. Over the years, Facts On File added other reference works such as Today's Science on File, Issues and Controversies on File, and Editorials on File.

For years, these were print products only. Then, when CD-ROMs became popular computer peripherals, the publisher began putting out a CD-ROM version as well. About three years ago, however, the company's management realized that CDs were losing popularity. "Libraries were buying fewer of them," says Labeau. Sales of the printed version were also slipping. "This was a critical time for our company," Labeau adds. "We had to find another way to deliver our products, so we decided to move them to the Internet."

Going Online
Because Facts On File management did not want to get into the business of designing and hosting a Web site, they began looking for a development partner with the experience to do this for them. "We are a publisher and our primary skills are editorial," notes Labeau. "We didn't want to set up a technical shop here." Facts On File had previously hired IHS to create a CD and the experience had been very good. Called Landmark Documents, this CD is a collection of primary source documents dating back to the 15th century. The CD contains full-text versions of 1,600 documents including the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, important Supreme Court decisions and famous speeches. As a research tool for libraries and schools, it has been an enormous commercial success. It was also honored as the Electronic Reference Work of the Year by the online/electronic reference committee of the American Library Association. "Our experience with having IHS produce this CD was very positive," says Labeau. "They delivered on time, they kept to the budget, they provided good technical solutions to any problems we encountered, and the result was a quality product. These things weighed heavily when we were choosing a Web partner."

Facts On File still went through a formal selection process to pick a Web partner, evaluating a total of 18 suppliers. IHS continued to stand out, for several reasons. "They understood what most other vendors did not-- namely the nature of the reference business and how you have to manage the data," said Labeau. "Also, their price was reasonable. A couple of vendors came in with good solutions but priced themselves out of the market." IHS has more than 15 years of expertise as a custom electronic publisher for Fortune 500 companies. It can convert data to virtually any format, including ASP, XML, SGML, HTML, PDF, and TIF and offers CD-ROM, client/server, DVD, Internet, Intranet, and Extranet as delivery options.

Facts On File awarded IHS the Web contract and picked World News Digest to be its first online offering. They were aware that the process of moving information to the Web would have inevitable glitches, but they had something of a head start since they were already publishing it on CDs and using HTML technology. "What remained for IHS to do was to put the information into a database, devise a method for searching and managing the data, and set up the access privileges and subscription service," explained Labeau.

A problem arose during this process because Facts On File formats its documents in a certain way that permits hyperlinking to related stories and background features. "Hyperlinks are one of the strengths of our products," explains Labeau. "They let you drop into the middle of a story, for example, and then click on links to see where it came from or what happened next." Facts On File's formatting consists of HTML with an XML-like wrapper. The wrapper includes an ID tag for the story, the title, links to other stories, date information, such as when the event happened and when various articles cited in the story were published. All this information is stored in a table and enables hyperlinks. The first solution proposed for managing and searching the database turned out to be incompatible with this format. "It caused the original database engine to choke," continued Labeau. " But IHS didn't give up on the project. They changed the entire approach and made it work." IHS devised a Microsoft-based solution that stores the data in a SQL Server as standard text data in blobs, and uses other products such as Index server, Site Server and Internet Information Server to support the hyperlinks and other features of the Facts On File products.

Web hosting
Facts On File's Web site (www.2facts.com) is maintained by IHS' state-of-the-art Web hosting center, a secure, guarded facility with firewall protected high-speed Internet connection. The center also features dual power grids, with a diesel generator UPS; dual air-conditioners; dual Internet connections, with 20 megabyte microwave as the primary connection and an OC-12 Sonet ring as failover; and support for Solaris, Windows NT, VMS, and UNIX operating systems. IHS monitors the internal networks, servers, and site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, ensuring customer access at any time.

Once a week, Facts On File staff uploads information to the data hosting center. This includes both updates to existing stories and new material. The data is prepared in Framemaker Plus SGML format, although before uploading it is passed through filters that transform the data into HTML with the wrapper mentioned above. They upload as much as 20 megabytes every week. This takes place over the weekend. By Monday morning, IHS has loaded the data into a beta server for Facts On File to review. They spend Monday morning checking it for accuracy. By Monday afternoon, it is available to the public.

Facts On File currently has five products on the Web. In addition to World News Digest, there are Issues and Controversy on File, Science on File, World Almanac Reference Database, and World Almanac Encyclopedia. Libraries can purchase them separately or as a complete set. There are several thousand subscribers. That number does not reflect the number of users, since hundreds or thousands of users might access the service through a single school or public library. Since these products have been available online, Facts On File's business has grown significantly. "This year we will generate more than half of our revenue online," says Labeau. Sales of printed products have increased as well. Labeau attributes that to the fact that once people became familiar with Facts On File products online, they decided to buy a print subscription as well.

Facts On File credits some of this online success to choosing IHS as a partner. "They handle our application very well," said Labeau. "They make sure our products work as well on the Web as they do in other media, and their reliable hosting service keeps the information available at all times. They are an excellent Web partner."

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