Solution

Elsevier Health Science EMEA&LA has been very successful in selling regular books and were reluctant to move in the new opportunity of eBooks and Printing on Demand. Although the country managing directors understood the strategic importance of digital sales, they were more focussed on the short and mid term sales objectives. 

Jointly working with all country business units, other RELX entities and cooperate strategy an online sales channel strategy was created. My years of experience with digital sales and my elaborate industry expertise was instrumental for a solid strategy based on the new digital market mechanics. We added major players like Amazon, Apple and Google as channels, but also added local channels in 15 countries. The total digital sales increased with 450% as a result.

A big factor in online sales is the pricing of eBooks. Most of the countries were pricing eBooks the same as print. From my experience I knew that consumers expect prices of eBooks to be lower. To convince the MT we conducted a price point test on Amazon, which proved that 80% of print resulted in the highest revenue.

A big project to increase the number of available titles was also managed by me. The project was of less priority for most countries. To reach the project objectives, my approach was to have at least weekly status calls with the responsible people and keep pushing for progress. Sharing best practices between teams to increase efficiency. Reporting the status per country to the management team with traffic lights. 8 of 9 countries delivered on target with a total increase of 500% in eBooks and 350% in Printing On Demand titles.