Enhance Cost Per Use reports
It would be really good if we could customise the Cost Per Use reports to better reflect the data each institution might want to collect. For example, they might need the cost data to be based on invoice subscription dates rather than fiscal year paid. Another example is wanting to calculate on usage on a specific platform rather than combined usage across all platforms.
In August 2019 we officially released a new Cost Per Use structure integrated into the E-Inventory subject area with special consideration for determining the COUNTER platform in the Cost Per Use. On August 13th we had two world wide webinars (for different time zones) explaining the new feature. This was developed together with a group of early testers and development partners via a Basecamp group that met regularly, consisting of 17 librarians from 11 institutions. This also includes the fund information in the e-inventory subject area as requested in ideas exchange with 174 votes https://ideas.exlibrisgroup.com/forums/308173-alma/suggestions/19256761-in-analytics-add-fund-information-to-e-inventory-s
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Karen Schlesser commented
I agree with Pauline, the fiscal year limitation is a big one. In some cases, subscription dates don't correspond to the Alma fiscal year, or payments are made in advance. We should be able to use the Usage Date field (already available in the Usage Data subject area) and the Invoice Subscription Date (already available in the Funds Expenditure subject area) to customize more precisely. The only work-around for this is to calculate cost per use outside of Alma. Thanks.
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Pauline Smith commented
I am glad the development of the new cost usage in the e-inventory is going to be a reality. However, the fiscal year period used in calculating the cost per use is still not desirable. We have the fiscal year running from July 1 to June 30. If we pay a resource on July 3 for a subscription period from July to June, and then prepay on June15 to pay for July to June for the next subscription period, then we are screwed, because both payments fall in the same fiscal year. The subscription period is recorded in the invoice. Why is it so hard to make use of the subscription period in Alma to have a precise calculation?
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Regarding the request "wanting to calculate on usage on a specific platform rather than combined usage across all platforms.".
This is something which has already been developed and currently is being tested by a group of 10 institutions who have kindly agreed to be development partners in this major development.
Details can be found here.
https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Training/Extended_Training/Presentations_and_Documents_-_Analytics
See file:
Analytics - July and August 2019 developments for the COUNTER Platform.pptx -
Chris Bulock commented
Yoel, unfortunately the new development does not address one of the initial requests. The Cost Usage section of the E-inventory subject area does indeed include a new Platform area. Initially, I was quite excited by that, but it still combines usage across all the platforms. So the column will have a single usage number, and the platform column will have something like "Ithaka; ProQuest; Taylor & Francis." This does not support the desired functionality of "wanting to calculate on usage on a specific platform" based on fund/cost info.
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The H1 2019 roadmap includes a revamp of the Cost Per Use subject area, whereby the usage, funds expenditure and e-inventory will all be accessible in the current e-inventory subject area.
Developments include the ability to report on e-books as well as e journals, and on portfolios purchased as a part of a collection but without unique POLs.
The moving of the cost per use to the e-inventory subject area will also allow for enhanced reports and matching procedures on the COUNTER title and Alma title.
Since Sept. 2017 Ex Libris working closely on these developments with several development partners including Harvard University, Frie University of Berlin, KU Leuven in Belgium, Boston College, UT Dallas, Sheffield University, Brandeis University, University of Minnesota and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Stay tuned for details. -
Louise Driscoll commented
I see "Redesign Cost per use' is on the Alma road map for H1 2019. Still going to keep my 3 votes on here though until something more concrete is revealed.
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Pauline Smith commented
Agreed! The subscription dates are more important than the invoice date, since we often pre-pay, e.g. We invoiced in November 2017 to pay for 1-12/2018 subscription. And the platform is also needed.
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Jerry McCulley commented
I agree. They need to expand the Usage folder to be more useful. It should be more flexible to include other types of data. Perhaps a list of check boxes to set in Usage so you can get what you need. Until then, I'll have to continue my love/hate relationship with Excel !
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Matthew Ismail commented
This enhancement would be so important for the functionality of the system. If my department cannot get cost-per-use for each platform then Alma Analytics fails to meet our needs in a very fundamental way. Aggregated platform usage data is useless. If this cannot be fixed we will have to continue to use a 3rd party tool to do analytics.
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Louise Driscoll commented
I aim to vote in NERS for this: ID 5624
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Lisa Wilczak commented
Yes! Cost per use reports that only offer combined usage across all platforms are not helpful. Currently, we manually calculate cost per use only on the the platform we pay a subscription on in order to evaluate renewals. This enhancement would save our institution much time and money, as we subscribe to another usage consolidation service in order to collect this data in a helpful format.
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Nikki DeMoville commented
Yes, we must be able to break out or include/exclude data by interface/platform. The most basic reason for using this report is to assess subscription value, which cannot happen if we don't know whether the use is happening in the native platform, at JSTOR, or in aggregator databases.
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Louise Driscoll commented
YES! The inability to customise makes this report unusable as it currently stands. The majority of our subscriptions are pre-paid in the year proceeding the subscription year - so cost per use has to be calculated across fiscal periods
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Amira Aaron commented
This is a very important enhancement that we need in order to have the cost/usage report being at all meaningful. The platform must be included!!
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Scott Carlisle commented
Platform information (Highwire, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, etc.) needs to be added to Cost Usage. These details are essential when evaluating usage for collection development purposes and are already available in the Usage Data subject area. Usage from certain platforms often needs to be excluded from usage totals because it is unrelated to the paid subscription being analyzed and throws off the direct cost-per-use calculation.