Two days in Düsseldorf

The PublishOne advisory council event 2022

Whenever we’re asked which features are going next into PublishOne, our answer is always the same: whichever ones our existing clients need the most. That’s why in June 2022, we spent two days in Düsseldorf, Germany listening to our clients to find out what they need over the next three to five years. We dedicated an entire day to executives and another to IT managers from organizations around the world – from Europe to South America.

Experience has shown us that our existing clients know our solutions best. While potential or new clients can provide a fresh outlook, when we’re detailing future releases it’s the knowledge and experiences of our day-to-day users which are the most valuable.

That’s why collaboration and true partnership are at the heart of the PublishOne roadmap. So let’s take a closer look at how our advisory councils work, and some of the key findings from this year’s exciting two-day event in Düsseldorf.

 

The Executive Advisory Council
The Executive Advisory Council (EAC) consists of our existing clients and partners. At the EAC, our clients share their thoughts on trends in the market, the latest industry initiatives, opportunities they see for themselves, and opportunities they see for us.

In exchange, we share our long term plans to ensure we’re properly aligned with our clients’ needs. This friendly partnership enables us to better serve our customers’ long-term needs by helping us to understand:

● how the market will evolve
● what our future opportunities are
● what we should concentrate on as a company.

 

The Software Advisory Council
The Software Advisory Council (SAC) is a client forum which helps us to scope and deliver the right releases at the right time. The SAC enables our existing clients to directly influence the contents of future releases, and helps us to ensure that our software development efforts are directly targeted at their most imminent needs.

In order to achieve this, we share and adhere to five core principles:

1. Concentrate on core functionality
2. Allow client-specific configurations
3. Interface with adjacent solutions
4. Be a global platform
5. Be pleasant to use

We believe that our clients not only use PublishOne for the solutions it provides today, what’s equally important is what PublishOne can do for them tomorrow, and how it will evolve in line with their changing needs.

That’s why we give our clients a central role in our roadmap process and in doing so, our clients become development partners, benefiting from collaboration and combined strength.

 

Continuous improvement through true partnership
As a product-based company, our success is measured by the effectiveness of our software for our clients. We’re not IT consultants, but we do work closely with clients to help them use our software more efficiently, understand their pain points, and adjust our development priorities accordingly. Our advisory event gives us a chance to do that.

At PublishOne, we’re extremely transparent about what we’ve done and what we’re doing next. Based on previous feedback from clients, this year we’ve already improved functionality for groups of authors working within the system, and made an enhancement which allows users to re-organize information more easily. But it doesn’t stop there. We’re also exploring how to increase integrations with external software to increase the size of the available ecosystem.

This year, we also shared details about our recent updates to quality assurance and enterprise integrations – both initiated in response to client needs. We also consulted clients on the frequency of releases and whether there was too much change, or not enough.

Key takeaways from our 2022 advisory event
Our conversations with clients are guided by directional themes, such as workflow support or metadata granularity. This year, due to global technology trends across multiple industries, we expected AI integration to be a popular theme.

However, whilst AI integration is definitely a key long-term consideration for many clients, those looking to drive efficiencies through time-saving automations, other directional themes seem to be a higher priority right now.

Here are the top three takeaways:

  • Accessibility: With 15% of the world’s population experiencing some form of disability, accessibility was high on the agenda for many of our clients.
  • Templates: A popular request was for more out-of-the-box templates for workflows and publications to streamline the workflows around content creation and publication.
  • Self-service: Increased functionality to allow authors to access information, support, and solutions without the need to contact tech support or PublishOne.

This year’s advisory council event was a great success and has enabled us to clearly define our focus going forward. We’re grateful to all our clients and partners for their continued collaboration and their valuable input into making the event a worthwhile experience for all.

To find out more about the publishing power of PublishOne, contact us.