The Responsa Project

The Responsa Project

THE CHALLENGE: Israel’s Bar Ilan University publishes one of largest libraries of Talmudic Responsa. It was delivered for over 20 years on CD media. However, the institutional customers demanded web based delivery capability. The challenge was to overcome management fears that the new channel would cannibalize the older media’s revenue base. Furthermore, there was little access to web technology capable resources and there was no budget to acquire these resources prior to proof positive that the Return on the Investment (ROI) was real. There were also data security concerns.

THE CHOICE:   The compelling reason for choosing the NetIS platform was the ability to use one integrated platform for Web Content Management, DRM protection capabilities and ecommerce. Also very important was the ability to access individual pages at low levels of granularity and functionality. This granularity was the key to facilitating the segmentation of product offerings for the consumer and institutional businesses of the university. The use of SEO with the highly effective NetIS DRM enabled an aggressive campaign to sell to the consumer market.

THE SOLUTION/RESULTS:  Bar Ilan purchased a license and implemented the system is 4 months with additional customization delivered over time.  The new on-line business utilized the granularity functions of NetIS to distinguish between the consumer and institutional users. Bar Ilan was able to prove ROI in second year of usage almost approaching the total amount of the CD based revenue which took 20 years to build. While some CD revenue was impacted the net impact of the new business was clearly seen.  The back-office support functions of the e-business modules of NetIS were used to fine tune pricing and maintain balance in their mix of media delivery. The university has committed to long term use of the NetIS platform.