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We count on textbook distribution as an income source. Why should we consider ED MAP?
Don’t confuse the revenues your institution receives from textbook distribution with income; providing books and course materials for your students is actually costly and time consuming. Many schools have switched to ED MAP after calculating their start-to-finish expenses of self-distributing books as well as considering their opportunity costs. ED MAP improves your managerial information and control while substantially reducing the time you’d spend managing the distribution process. And if ED MAP is your institution’s preferred on-line bookstore, you’ll gain a true income stream from our sharing of the revenue generated from your institution’s sales. Tally up the advantages and the sum total is clear: using ED MAP enhances your bottom line.
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What advantages does ED MAP offer compared to its competitors?
The primary advantages for our customers derive from the fact that ED MAP is more than just a book distributor. We developed a sophisticated suite of software that provides our customers a range of tools they can use to manage the entire distribution process. ED MAP also developed – and continues to enhance – a community of vetted resources to ensure we can offer our customers a solution to any need, even if it is specific to their organization. ED MAP’s extensive management know-how ensures the effective use all of these resources.
ED MAP is an independent company, not beholden to a parent company with other interests. Only ED MAP can state that all of our resources – every dollar we spend, every inch of space we use, and every activity our staff engage in – are committed only to serving our institutional customers. With no parent company to report to and no hiding our successes or failures in a multi-billion dollar balance sheet, we are accountable only to our customers. When ED MAP states that the drive to provide exceptional customer service underlies all our interactions, these are not hollow words. It’s our raison d’etre.
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Will ED MAP work with publishers on behalf of its customers?
Your customized ED MAP system links your faculty directly to the publisher resources you will need. In addition, we provide faculty with access to your institution’s purchasing history and the ability to consolidate orders across campuses, which translates into greater savings.
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What type of customer service does ED MAP offer?
ED MAP has a customer support center with toll-free numbers and extended hours of operation to assist students of institutions that utilize ED MAP as their preferred online bookstore or distributor. Students who prefer to place their orders via telephone, fax or postal service are able to do so through the center. Our dedicated customer service representatives work onsite and are focused exclusively on the business of helping students receive their course materials in a timely manner.
- How do students pay for their materials? What options are available to them?
ED MAP accepts all major credit cards – in addition to checks and money orders, of course. We also can offer a financial aid payment option for students who use their financial aid to pay for their course materials. ED MAP takes care of processing statements and billing the program or third-party. For more information please see the question concerning student financial aid.
- How quickly does ED MAP process orders?
ED MAP guarantees that any in-stock order placed before 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time Monday-Friday is processed and shipped out that same day. All in-stock orders are shipped within one business day of receipt of the order. Unlike some of our competitors, ED MAP does not restrict our one-business-day shipping guarantee to only those students paying for overnight shipping.
- Where is ED MAP located?
ED MAP is housed in a 100,000 square foot facility located in the Appalachian foothills of southeastern Ohio. Our unique location means that shipments reach your students quickly – wherever they are. Major publishers – and 66% of the U.S. population – are within a one-to-three day UPS ground delivery area from our facility.
- How do you service your accounts?
Each client institution is assigned an academic support manager and a team of individuals who oversee every aspect of our clients’ support services on a daily basis. We offer no-cost on-site training to familiarize your institution with our easy to use tools. Our attention to detail makes ED MAP an industry leader.
Our state-of-the-art software is flexible enough to accommodate any variety of institutional organizations and programs. The key is we provide you with easy to use tools and real time information so that you always know what is going on, whether you have one campus, multiple locations or a distance-learning program. Click here to read how one institution benefited by becoming an ED MAP customer.
- Can we use ED MAP’s software even if ED MAP is not distributing books and materials to our students?
Yes. Let’s say that one of your sites uses the regional campus bookstore, another site uses a national textbook distributor, and yet another chooses to use a local bookstore. These disparate vendors can all work through ED MAP’s suite of centralized management software. This approach is encouraged as the best way to solidify and manage operations while honoring each site’s individual choice of vendor.
Of course, we suggest you consider adding ED MAP to your distributor mix.
- What are ED MAP’s used book policies – both in terms for selling to students as well as buying back used texts? What is the typical availability of used books? How are they determined to be of good quality?
We offer students the option of selecting used books whenever the institution has given us permission to do so. Used books are sold at a 25% discount from the price of a new book. ED MAP also offers a buyback service that is available to all students, whether or not their institution permits used books in their program.
For the most part, three national wholesalers control the used book market. They determine the value of most textbooks and buy those books either from bookstores or from students at a “wholesale” price that can be quite disappointing for students. So at the wholesale level there is typically little to no difference between buyback prices offered to students from vendor to vendor. ED MAP’s buyback service uses those price lists that are made available through national wholesalers.
ED MAP, however, also offers a “premium” buy-back service that matches what occurs in college bookstores across the country. If we know that the book could be placed in our own inventory, we offer a premium price – normally 40% of the retail price for new.
If ED MAP is unable to buy a sufficient number of books from students to maintain appropriate used book inventory levels, we do what every other book vendor will do. We buy used books from national wholesalers to meet the inventory levels required.
- Can ED MAP help students use financial aid for course materials procurement?
Absolutely. In fact the financial aid module of ED MAP’s OpenVue streamlines the financial aid administration process and takes it to a higher level. Administrators will be delighted to find that our software handles all aspects of managing their students financial aid purchases from a centralized location, even if the students are scattered across different sites. Purchases are credited to the student’s own account while staff is provided with access to all the data in a form that’s easy for them to use – in real-time or reports mailed on a schedule of their choice.
Participating students will appreciate how easy it is to use.
- How does the institution’s staff stay informed about the fulfillment processes?
How would your staff prefer to be informed? If a question comes up that requires an immediate answer – or any other time they want to see the status of inventory or an order, for example – staff can log onto our site and view in real-time the information they want. And if they want regular reports detailing, for example, your institution’s inventory or your students’ orders, we have an automatic report writer that will send whichever reports you request to whichever staff you request on whatever schedule you request. Managing the information flow has never been easier.
- Our term lengths vary – and sometimes overlap. Can ED MAP accommodate my institution’s schedules?
Yes. We can open your institution’s online bookstores to display whichever courses are active at the time, and we can distribute course materials on any schedule that you specify.
- Our students take several courses consecutively during the semester, but they do not always want to purchase all of their books at one time. Can ED MAP control the order in which the course materials are displayed to correspond with the order in which the courses are taught? It’s important that it be easy for students to see what materials are needed next.
Yes, the flexibility of our software makes it possible for us to do this. In fact, one of our current customers came to ED MAP because we were the only company that was able to offer this service.
- I’m interested in becoming an ED MAP customer. How long would it take for ED MAP to be able to start providing service to my institution?
In general, we request six to eight weeks of lead time in order to be able to learn about your program, design and implement your customized package of services, and verify and procure your requested course materials. If your schedule is shorter than that, however, we’ll work to have you set up and running as quickly as possible.
- I’d like to speak with someone about working with ED MAP. Whom should I contact?
We’d be happy to start communicating with you. Please call (800) 274-9104, ext 321, or e-mail business_development@edmap.biz.
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