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Company Profile

ProQuest creates specialized information resources and technologies that enable successful research and lifelong learning. A global leader in serving libraries of all types, ProQuest offers the culmination of experience from the most respected brands in research and publishing and has enjoyed a 70-year relationship with the academic research and library communities.

Industry

Information Research & Technology

Seminars

Practical Product Management and Requirements That Work

Challenge

One component of ProQuest's growth is acquisitions. ProQuest has acquired multiple companies and brands since 2001. In the process, the company has become the global leader in information research and library management solutions. The combined product portfolio gives ProQuest the ability to support the diverse needs of modern libraries, librarians and their patrons. For many companies, the challenge of being a rapid acquirer of many content and technology firms would have a negative effect on the company's ability to manage an evolving product portfolio; except the management team has mastered the art of company integration.

“Our on-boarding process is very efficient and standardized” states Mary Sauer-Games, Vice President, Higher Education Publishing for ProQuest.

"A critical area of the company’s integration activity is the “on-boarding” of new product managers from the acquired companies. This rapid integration of product management is based on the Pragmatic Marketing Framework.

“Many of the companies we acquire are relatively small. Their product management process is informal and usually not mature” offers Sauer-Games. "Using the Pragmatic Marketing Framework provides a common vocabulary and process that can easily be adapted by the new companies and their product management teams."

Solution

ProQuest has been using the Practical Product Management and Requirements That Work seminars for over 3 years to ensure that newly acquired companies and newly hired product managers learn how to navigate the company’s product lifecycle process.

ProQuest sponsors the core product management seminars on site to leverage the unique aspects of their business.

“We prefer to conduct the seminars in our offices because we can focus on our specific business issues” remarks Sauer-Games.

Results

ProQuest has integrated the concepts of the Pragmatic Marketing Framework into their overall product lifecycle and product development process. The success of this implementation is the result of the work by their Program Management Office (PMO).

“We have based our product review process on key components of the Framework” said Teresa Katlin, PMO Leader, ProQuest.

The result is a market-driven orientation to the product development effort.

Customer Feedback

“The Pragmatic Marketing seminars provide us with a lot of value because we could not duplicate these concepts with our own resources. We have been sponsoring these seminars for several years and we have not found anything else that compares.”
Mary Sauer-Games, Vice President, Higher Education Publishing, ProQuest