Corner Office Interview: SirsiDynix’s Rautenstrauch and Nelson
CEO Gary M. Rautenstrauch and VP of library relations Berit Nelson discuss the issues impacting libraries and their company Oct 1, 2010| PHOTO BY JAC SCOTT |
LJ recently spoke with SirsiDynix CEO Gary M. Rautenstrauch and newly appointed VP of library relations Berit Nelson (pictured here at the Provo City Library, UT) about some of the issues that have been roiling the ILS world and the company itself, among them the recent consolidation of SirsiDynix's offices, customer service, the state of library budgets, the rise of ebooks and ereaders, and much more.
Since the 2005 merger of Sirsi and Dynix, the company has been working hard to redefine its image and get closer to its customers. The appointment of longtime employee Nelson to a new customer–centered role shows the emphasis they are placing on such issues.
Rautenstrauch has led SirsiDynix since 2007 and has more than 25 years' experience with vendors developing products and services for the library community, among them Baker & Taylor, where he was CEO, and Blackwell's Book Services.
Nelson was named VP of library relations in July 2010, having been with the company for more than two decades. In that time, she has been involved with library training, sales, software development, and product management. She holds an MLS from the University of Missouri–Columbia.
LJ: Looking to the future, what impact are ebooks and ereaders having on your scenario planning?
Nelson: Ebooks present some new challenges in terms of discovery, and a lot of that's around authentication and how our libraries put together usage statistics. Nevertheless, ebooks also use all of the traditional aspects of the ILS. So customers use the acquisition module to purchase them. They use the loader tools to make sure that the ebooks are accessible for searching and usage. But one of the challenges libraries face is the number of licensing models for ebooks and the lack of standard user interfaces. There are some standard models for handling authentication. But if we could have general adoption by the various ebook providers, we could emulate circulation transactions, which means that libraries would have an easy way to combine all of their usage stats.
Is there a general standard?
Nelson: There really isn't, and that is one of the challenges. We talked with Baker & Taylor about using some of the standards that are in place at libraries, regardless of ILS system. That's really what we would like to see: ebook publishers looking at the full extent of their services and all of the places that they're selling and hopefully taking advantage of existing standards when possible, so that we're not all having to do additional coding.
How are lower library budgets impacting the short– and medium–term business outlook for ILS vendors, particularly SirsiDynix?
Rautenstrauch: I think library budget pressures are causing all of us to adjust. We see an increased interest in consortia and activities such as resource sharing that allow libraries to collaborate and share costs. I think in times like this, it's more important than ever for technology partners like SirsiDynix to be closely aligned with libraries. We've seen a strong interest in our Strategic Partner Program, which allows libraries to be actively involved with us from the very early stages of software development cycles and therefore have greater impact on what we release in the final software release. The ongoing need for training of library staff at reasonable cost has driven us to develop our learning management system.
Do budget issues mean that libraries will stay with Horizon longer, rather than migrate to Symphony?
Rautenstrauch: We still have quite a few Horizon libraries, and many of them don't have the money, the staff, or the time to migrate to something else. As one of our librarians in Minnesota said to me, "With software, if it's not moving forward, it's moving backward." And we just can't let Horizon move backward. So we are continuing development and continuing support for those libraries that need it.
Have you seen libraries embracing e–commerce capabilities in response to lower budgets?
Nelson: In 2004 or 2005, we released our first interface with PayPal and VeriSign, in our e–library product lines. And our customers were kind of interested, but perhaps the time wasn't quite right. But over the last several months, we've seen a huge increase in the number of customers who are actively adding e–commerce options to make it easier for their end users to interact from home. They're also working with vendors like EnvisionWare to accept debit cards. I would have anticipated the e–commerce drive to be more of a public library thing, but we are seeing large academic customers, like Louisiana State University, also implementing it.
When we last spoke, you talked about improving customer relations by establishing library relations managers (LRMs) in different parts of the country. How is that playing out?
Nelson: We've had very positive results so far. We are continuing to expand LRM positions beyond the eight we discussed earlier, so that we will have coverage around the world. We work with customers to highlight capabilities in software so that they can take full advantage of new or existing features. The LRM team also gets very much involved in support. We have customers with complex projects that may require input and cooperation among multiple SirsiDynix departments, and the LRM team helps coordinate that. Our customers have a desire for us to have the bigger picture of what they're doing individually.
Regarding the closing of your offices in Huntsville, AL, and St. Louis: What triggered the reconfiguration?
Rautenstrauch: It was triggered by a desire to get everything together and in one place. And it's really led to an exciting time for us here in Provo, [UT] where we have the technology center, where we now provide 24–hour, worldwide, multilingual library support, as well as building our centralized software development team. We've had several experienced staff members stay on. Some are still deciding about relocation, some are in the process of relocating from other offices. Some have transitioned to working from home, as well. And the experienced ones have helped with training and on–boarding the new staff. I mentioned our learning management system that we have for libraries—of course, we're also using that internally to bring our new folks up to speed as quickly as possible.
How do you feel about OCLC getting into the ILS arena?
Nelson: When OCLC provides a service for which there are valid competitors, typically libraries select the final service in a competitive bid situation. That's certainly been the case for OCLC interlibrary loan services. OCLC often is in the mix, along with several other vendors. My prediction is that we will find exactly the same thing as it releases its cloud–based ILS. OCLC might have some cost capabilities that other vendors would not, but I think that remains to be seen.
Do you see cloud–based products as the wave of the future?
Nelson: We've actually seen this as a trend since the late 1990s, and we do have a significant infrastructure to support the move toward cloud–based computing. One of the most compelling shifts in our own customer base has been the growing interest in software as a service, or SaaS, and we actually have hundreds of customers who are already using our Symphony and Horizon platforms in the SaaS environment. We definitely see our customers looking for economies of scale by reducing hardware expenses and support time for mundane tasks like backup and upgrades. We've expanded our own hosting facilities to include three sites in North America, and we also have facilities in the UK and Australia. We don't see this trend slowing down at all. If anything, it's going to become the expected model of service.
Can the traditional ILS survive?
Rautenstrauch: I don't think the ILS is going away, and, in fact, there's demand for new and improved delivery of ILS services by patrons and students. The obvious example is with mobile technology. Last year we released the BookMyne mobile application for patrons. We are now working on mobile applications for use not only by patrons but by library staff, so they're not chained to a desk and can do some of the traditional transactions while they're mobile.
Nelson: Our customers are looking for ways to highlight the wealth of their collections, both the electronic and the remaining print collections, but they also want to highlight the intellectual activity that might be responsible for selecting content to meet a particular need. That's really something that we look to with our Enterprise and Portfolio product lines, which allow us not only to build content but to manage remote content. We think that's pertinent to every type of library, and it's something that we see our customers becoming increasingly interested in.
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| David Rapp is Associate Editor, Technology, and Francine Fialkoff is Editor–in–Chief, LJ |
