American Psychiatric Publishing Inc publishes a portfolio of journals and books, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), a key work in the field of psychiatry.

Challenge: Validate Tiered Pricing Schema

American Psychiatric Publishing determined it was necessary to validate their tiered pricing assignments for the 2013 subscription term. The existing pricing methodology had been implemented several years prior, and many assignments seemed no longer to apply. Over the years, APPI had broadened their offerings to include ebooks as well as journals, which expanded their user base to include more varied institutions. Also, some accounts’ usage and behavior seemed not to align with other institutions in the same tier, but APPI had insufficient data to reassign them confidently. “Two institutions appeared on paper to be similar but differences in behavior told another story,” says Patrick Hansard, Director of Marketing and Sales. Only with authoritative supplemental data could APPI inform the revision of their price tiers, and understand how any modifications might impact individual accounts.

In order to give their library customers confidence in their methods and eliminate possible objections from accounts which might find themselves reassigned, APPI made a conscious decision to work with an external, authoritative data source.  The Identify Database met this requirement, and would also give them the additional data they needed to undergird decisions about each subscriber.

Ringgold’s researchers performed an Identify Audit of APPI’s complete subscriber base, and provided the resulting data in 6 weeks’ time. Subsequent analysis by APPI staff revealed the affected accounts, and gave an understanding of the overall financial implications of these reassignments. Staff was then able to begin reaching out to their subscriber base in time for the 2013 renewal season.

• Global, multi-sector coverage allowed classification of the entire customer base
• Size metrics. Identify’s FTE counts and Ringgold Tiers were used in combination to gauge the potential size of each user population
• Classification by industry sector and type of organization enabled APPI to verify if an account was a large medical school rather than a small medical research facility, for example.
• As a bonus, Identify hierarchy levels made clear precisely at which level of an organization the subscriptions were held, and at which the APPI tier should be applied. Thus an individual hospital would not be treated the same as a hospital system.

APPI and their subscribers experienced a smooth 2013 renewal season; the revised tier assignments were greeted with minimal friction.  By pointing to the clear tier definitions and metrics which led to each reassignment, APPI staff was able to work confidently with their librarians and manage transitions effectively, rather than spend valuable staff time defending their pricing.