Getting a reprint decision right means knowing, today, how a title is selling — not how it was selling last week. Making the right call keeps books available, avoids unnecessary stockholding, and creates opportunities for more efficient print runs across markets. It is a decision that depends entirely on having accurate, timely data — and one that becomes significantly harder when stock levels, sales figures, and forecasting inputs are spread across systems that do not share information.
Making that kind of decision well is a challenge common to inventory teams across the industry. Today, Usborne makes use of the alerts dashboard to monitor and respond to any stock movements, sales and flagged activity that has been processed within the Inventory module. That shift — from weekly manual collation to daily automated visibility — is the story of Usborne's inventory module implementation.
Polly Tingle, Inventory Manager
Usborne Publishing · 1 minute 30 seconds
Before implementing BiblioSuite's inventory management module, Usborne's inventory operation relied on multiple spreadsheets and reports drawn from different systems that could not communicate with each other. The team had to manually collate multiple reports, some of which were only generated on a weekly basis. By the time those reports had been gathered and reconciled, demand patterns could already have changed — a stock level that looked healthy on Monday could tell a different story by Thursday. Reprint decisions that needed to be made promptly were instead delayed while data was assembled, and the risk of catching a problem too late — whether a title heading toward a stock-out or a co-print window quietly closing — was an ongoing operational pressure.
"This made it difficult to be responsive to changes in demand, or at least made it more challenging." — Polly Tingle, Inventory Manager, Usborne Publishing
This is a common constraint for publishers managing inventory across multiple markets and distributor relationships. When stock levels, sales data, and forecasting inputs live in separate systems and are reconciled manually, the team is always responding to last week's position rather than today's.
There was also a more specific forecasting problem. The team had no reliable way to differentiate between standard trade orders and special sales, direct deliveries, and remainder orders — which meant that one-off bulk purchases could distort forecasts based on regular sales patterns. And the projected point at which a title would sell through its last copy was produced by an Excel formula with limited forecasting capacity, rather than a calculation that updated in response to daily sales activity.
Usborne worked with Virtusales to develop the inventory module to their specifications: a centralized system for inventory, print orders, and bibliographic data, with automated feeds replacing manual report generation. The team now works from stock and sales data refreshed daily, rather than a manually reconciled picture that could be up to a week out of date. Reprint and co-print decisions that once waited on data being assembled can now be made on a current view.
THE CHALLENGE: WORKING FROM LAST WEEK'S PICTURE
The most immediate operational change is how the inventory team begins each day. Rather than pulling and collating reports, the team navigates to the alerts dashboard, which surfaces what has changed overnight based on the previous day's stock and sales activity.
The alerts cover both sales events — large orders processed, high sales accumulating on a title — and stock events, including reprint-advised notifications. The team can tailor alerts to match how they work, ensuring attention is focused on the titles that genuinely need intervention: defining how far in advance to flag a stock change, and what threshold constitutes a large order. The result is a working day that starts with a prioritized list of decisions, not a data assembly task.
"This helps us plan much further ahead and respond to changes in demand, before they become a problem." — Polly Tingle, Inventory Manager, Usborne Publishing
A DIFFERENT KIND OF MORNING
For publishers producing titles across multiple markets, co-printing — combining print runs for different markets into a single production order — is one of the most effective levers for improving unit economics. The opportunity only exists if upcoming print schedules across all markets are visible far enough in advance to act on.
Previously, that visibility was difficult to achieve when data sat in separate systems. BiblioSuite's schedule summary, visible alongside the forecast screen, shows order close dates for upcoming print runs across all markets — not just UK trade. When a UK reprint window aligns with a forthcoming run for another market, the team can identify the opportunity in time to act.
"This is really useful to identify co-print opportunities — meaning larger print runs altogether, and better unit costs." — Polly Tingle, Inventory Manager, Usborne Publishing
CO-PRINT OPPORTUNITIES IDENTIFIED BEFORE THE WINDOW CLOSES
Polly Tingle
Inventory Manager
"The inventory module has transformed our workflows. It's integrated, it's automated and responsive, it gives us accurate data, actionable alerts, and better forecasting. This allows us to make decisions earlier, act faster, and plan strategically."
BiblioSuite now carries inventory data for two key global distribution centers, allowing the team to navigate between distributors within the same module and compare how titles are performing across markets. Looking ahead, Usborne plans to extend integration to further distributors worldwide, to sync edition status flags with the distributor system, and to integrate shipper feeds so that print orders can be tracked from printer to warehouse.
A GLOBAL VIEW, IN PROGRESS
One of the most important metrics for the team is knowing when a title is likely to run out of stock. BiblioSuite calculates this automatically through its Commercially Out-of-Stock (COS) date — updated every day via an automated nightly feed from Usborne's distributor, replacing the static Excel calculation the team used previously.
"Due to the nightly feed, the module will automatically update the COS date each day based on the previous sales figures, which allows for more accuracy. This allows me to make much faster and more accurate reprint decisions." — Polly Tingle, Inventory Manager, Usborne Publishing
The forecast grid also now excludes non-trade orders automatically, keeping projections grounded in trade sales patterns rather than distorted by one-off bulk purchases — a distinction the team previously had no straightforward way to make. Historic sales going back five years are also accessible within the same view, alongside a sales analysis tab that allows the team to compare performance by customer or channel.
When a reprint is needed, the team raises a print instruction directly within BiblioSuite and generates a report for senior colleagues for sign-off — without switching to a separate system.
"This is another perk of having our inventory management integrated into one centralized system." — Polly Tingle, Inventory Manager, Usborne Publishing
REPRINT DECISIONS ON CURRENT DATA
How Usborne stopped guessing when to reprint
CUSTOMER STORY
Learn how Usborne replaced manual weekly stock reporting with daily automated alerts, enabling same-day decisions when stock issues arise.