I have been involved discussions this week with magazine distribution stakeholders in two overseas countries about magazine supply and related IT standards.  The discussions are providing an excellent insight into how others operate in this space which is complex and frustrating for newsagents here.  In one case they are showing what is possible and in another they are showing what to avoid.

I am surprised at the lack of cross border dialogue between newsagent representatives on these topics.  With newsagent associations working on a code of conduct at the present with magazine distributors, I would have thought that cross border research would be on the agenda.

There is no outcome yet, just good shared information which is helping to guide strategies in a couple of areas.

I was surprised to learn that there are newsagents who continue to process magazines at the end of the week (for weekly returns) or at the end of the month (for monthly returns).  In our newsagencies we scan the magazines as they come off each Monday, Wednesday and Friday.  We do this regardless of whether we have the electronic returns file from the distributor – the software will allocate to the right form once it has been received even after we have scanned the titles.

This approach of scanning magazine returns daily saves considerable time and space.

A newsagent I know who made the switch to the daily returns approach last year, after changing software, is saving at least eight paid hours of labour a month – $152 a month or $1,824 a year – plus on-costs.

I cringe when I see stacks of loose magazines in the back room of a newsagency.  This is like leaving cash for anyone to pick up or saleable stock to go missing.  I prefer to see tied or strapped bundles of magazines which have been scanned – ready for collection and return.

Too often, software companies fail to train newsagents on proper processes around tasks like magazine returns.  This is where the Tower Systems online Magazine Management training works – it is being run by someone who managed this in his own newsagency for years.

I am working with a group of retailers in a country which is behind Australian standards in the handling of magazines.  While here in Australia we are able to handle arrival of invoices and document unsold stock electronically and quickly, the group I am working with lives in a completely manual world – manual pricing of magazines, paper based invoices, paper based returns forms and paper based requests for additional stock.

This manual world condemns retailers to a higher labour cost and restrains them from being able to provide good customer service.  It hurts publishers because of lack of sales data.

While I think the Australian magazine distribution system is in urgent need of overhaul, my recent exposure to worse practices overseas is a reminder of how far we have come in recent years.