When Marc Jennings became president of the Langenscheidt Publishing Group in the US in 2005, he had one principle goal in mind: to streamline and synergize the group’s nine companies. He achieved his goal, but more importantly, he integrated the company’s travel, language, and reference products.

Marc Jennings

While the parent company, located in Germany, celebrates its 150th anniversary, Jennings and his team focus on the future of the US company. “We are building our future strategy around an integrated product model responding to customer needs for a one-stop shop in the area of travel,” he said.

Over the past 25 years, the Langenscheidt Publishing Group developed through a series of acquisitions, including ADC, American Map, Berlitz Publishing, Hagstrom, and Hammond World Atlas Corporation. In the last two years, Jennings and his team developed an aggressive strategy that put Langenscheidt in a prime position to push its products one step further.

The company sells to large retailers such as Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Staples, and some mass-market retailers and clubs like Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, and Costco. “When we talked to the retailers we noticed a trend. Customers now want to know more than how to get from point A to point B—they want to learn the language and be directed to popular destination points.”

Jennings approached the editorial and marketing departments with the idea to integrate the company’s products. After presenting mock designs to buyers, retailers, and end customers, they discovered a new avenue for growth.

“We have a three-year publishing plan that calls for continued release of our integrated product. Customers will still be able to purchase single products, but we want to give them the opportunity to buy a complete package,” he said.

“When you go to our Web site to find a map of New York City, the site will recommend a travel guide to you,” he said. “If you would like to learn another language, we can direct you to the right product. All of this expands the customer’s perception of us and creates additional revenue.”

Streamlined efficiency
When Jennings came on board in January 2005, his idea was to not only integrate Langenscheidt’s product lines, but also streamline management across all nine companies. The decentralized corporate structure that was previously in place allowed each company to develop its own unique capabilities. Employees were concerned about losing their autonomy, but Jennings wasn’t going to let that happen.

“I wanted all nine companies to maintain independence while feeling part of a larger whole,” he said. “The staff has embraced this idea, and right now there is a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and optimism for the future of the company.”

Streamlining the company’s infrastructure led to technological enhancements in new-product development and sales. The new-product development team streamlined its operations to bring products from the maps and cartography division to market more quickly.

“We have refined our new-product development process to bring products from concept to store shelf, with the help of a publishing committee, chaired by me,” he said. “We’ve substantially decreased that cycle and are currently testing cartographic technology that allows us to quickly create printed and digital maps after mapping a new region.”

To support the increase in product development, Jennings and his team invested in customized hand-held technology that tracks inventory and allows the sales team to print an invoice directly from a portable printer. The device was implemented in October and is equipped with Bluetooth technology.

“Our sales team can get in and out of the customer’s store location faster,” said Jennings. “They do an assessment of the inventory, load the product up from the van, reload the customer’s display, and invoice the customer in a shorter amount of time.”

Depending on the size of the customer and the amount of inventory they require, a sales person can make between three and 14 visits per day to a customer location. “Every day, each of our 70 distribution sales people are saving between 10 minutes and an hour on each visit, significantly improving productivity.”

Although Jennings only has one month’s worth of sales to analyze with the new technology in use, the increased efficiency in each of the three regional sales teams has strengthened the outlook he has for the future of Langenscheidt. “We need to get a few more months under our belt to determine all the benefits, but from what we’ve calculated, we anticipate a 15% increase in annual revenue from our biggest sales channel,” he said. “We calculate the payback on the technology to be less than six months, but with so many projects in the works for 2007, that number might shrink.”