Askews Library Services

Actian Ingres Database Powers Global Circulation for Askews Library Services

Highlights

Book lovers can be a highly selective group – and so are the libraries they frequent. To succeed in this highly competitive, low-margin market, Askews Library Systems has to give each library exactly what they want, the way they want it – even while handling more than three million books for thousands of customers worldwide each year. Ingres Database, a leading open source database for business-critcal applications, helps Askews meet each library’s specific e-procurement requirements reliably and cost-effectively so they’ll keep coming back time after time.

Challenge

Askews Library Systems provides libraries around the world with complete services including selection support, buying, cataloguing, physical preparation for lending, promotional support, and management reporting. “You can think of us as a factory,” says Tim Cotterall, Askews Commercial Director. “We understand the pressures libraries face and so we employ a multistage process that results in an end-product that makes their lives easier and more costeffective. That end-product is a fully catalogued book, with the right protective cover on it, and with the right combination of bar code, lending ticket, and security mark applied, ready to go on a library shelf somewhere to be lent to a reader.”

The libraries market within which Askews provides these services has become increasingly sensitive in recent years as economic pressures cap and in some cases depress spending. Four other companies compete with Askews in the £90m-a-year UK market, where contracts are awarded by competitive tender. Over the past decade, these pressures led the 130-yearold Askews to embrace state-of-the-art technology and process automation, including using the Web to market globally and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to serve customers world-wide. In addition, the company undertook the development of a bespoke e-procurement system.

Solution

In building a system to provide individualized service to its global customer base, the Askews database team faced a task of significant complexity. “Different libraries have different requirements that we need to remember and apply to each of the books we prepare for delivery,” explains Cotterall. “There is no standard approach. One customer might expect a certain type of protective cover and want a book on geography denoted with a yellow spot. Another might want a certain type of date label and bar code. We deliver some three million books a year and deal with more than 5,000 libraries in the United Kingdom alone, many of them with a different profile of interests and requirements.”

As Askews works to meet the diverse requirements of each individual customer while supporting a growing volume of business worldwide, Ingres has scaled seamlessly through several versions without the need for major intervention.

The latest upgrade came just before Christmas in 2006, when the hardware was upgraded to Sun x86 platforms, the operating system to Solaris 10, and the database moved to Ingres Database – all without drama. Cotterall accepts that such smooth transitions owe much to the practiced ease with which his people manage change, but he also pays tribute to the way the new version of Ingres simply builds on the strong foundations of earlier ones and delivers enhanced functionality without tears. “We did a couple of tests and went live,” he says.

Results

Askews’ Ingres database currently holds the details of some four million titles, 900,000 of which are currently in print. “It’s vital that we keep such a large repository of information about out of print titles because publishers can often decide to print another run of a title,” explains Cotterall. “We also need to retain knowledge of each customer and the relationship between each customer and each individual title.”

The database plays a central role in Askews’ efforts to tightly control costs at home while developing geographical reach. “The pressures have meant we’ve had to become smarter and more efficient at what we do,” says Cotterall. “Doing things electronically that before were largely manual processes has benefits for us and for our customers. It allows us to keep our costs under control and pass on the savings, which in turn makes us a more compelling partner than our competitors. Of course, it becomes even more important when you’re servicing some customers half way around the world. We like to think we are at the leading edge of e-procurement and we offer a complete solution for EDI orders, quotes, acknowledgements, order fulfilment, and invoices – in short, the complete supply chain. Eighty to 90 percent of orders are now placed electronically and our customers are able to access information stored in the database in order to make their selection. It’s very transparent, but of course it places more demands on our systems.”

But Cotterall insists it is very manageable, thanks in no small part to the ease with which Ingres can be maintained. Four in-house developers spend most of their time building enhancements to the service and working towards major system upgrades which, so far, have taken place approximately every three years. “The system does all we need, and does it with great integrity,” reports Cotterall. “Ingres makes a profound contribution to that robustness and utility because it is very high performance, flexible, ultra-stable, and easy to maintain. On the rare occasions we have had a problem, we’ve found the Ingres support service to be very good – even out of hours.”

Cotterall also likes the way licensing is now structured. “First of all, it’s a serious and unique benefit to be able to deal direct with the people actually developing the database, rather than going through a third party – which we would be forced to do if we used an alternative database. We also really like the way the open source model adopted by Ingres has substantially cut our costs. Ingres is clearly well aware that it will only retain the confidence of customers like us if it keeps a tight grip on development and I am confident that it will do so.”