Seven steps to a smooth renewals process
As the end of the year approaches, we're entering a critical time in the management of online access. Many of you will still be processing your renewals now, and transferring that data from your fulfilment system to our licensing database by January 1st may not be feasible. And yet you don't want to frustrate your library customers by cutting off access to which they are entitled.We help you solve this problem and avoid potential unhappiness amongst your customers by implementing a standard gracing policy across all our publishers. We invite you to work with us to ensure that this works smoothly, in order that we can protect the high standards of customer service and good reputation that both you and we strive to maintain.
As a provider of subscription access to your content, it is vital that we do receive renewal files reasonably in advance, and that those of you who use our WebSAS tool to process your own renewals keep us well informed about progress. To that end, we have come up with a seven step plan which we hope will help you to offer the best renewals service to your customers:
1. By 1st January 2006 – we will implement initial 3-month gracing licences; this work is underway.
2. You will then supply subscription files, or process your WebSAS "lapsed subscription" entries, on a timescale appropriate to you. We are contacting you now, and will do so again in the first week of January to keep the issue on all our desktops. Please note that we would strongly advise you to continue using existing subscriber numbers, or to provide us with a mapping file containing old and new subscriber numbers, to enable us to ensure your institutional customers' access is smoothly renewed.
3. Third week of February – we will send another reminder, including a list of your unrenewed library customers. We will ask you either to provide updated files or to update WebSAS before the next step.
4. 28th February – we will email all your unrenewed subscribers, to inform them that we have yet to receive their renewal details from the relevant publishers. We will advise them that their gracing runs out in one month's time, and that they should contact you directly to ensure that renewal information is passed to us in the appropriate fashion.
5. 20th March – we will send you a final notice to remind you to provide us with your renewals information.
6. 24th March – we will send a second email to all unrenewed subscribers, with a similar message, informing them that their access is graced until the end of March, but that we will then be bound to revert their online access period to ending in December 2005.
7. 31st March – we honour the end of your grace period, and inform each librarian of this.
Please note that if you operate rolling subscriptions, you should continue as normal; your customers' access will not be subject to gracing.
If you have any questions about our gracing policy, and the plan outlined above, please do not hesitate to contact your client manager. Our aim is to deliver a smooth process on your behalf, and we welcome your feedback.