CBA, ECPA End Talks on Merging Data Systems

by Lynn Garrett, Religion BookLine -- Publishers Weekly, 1/2/2008 9:46:00 AM

After a year and a half of negotiations on combining their separate sales data-gathering systems for the Christian market, CBA (the association of Christian retailers) and the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association, have announced the abandonment of that plan. A joint statement said, “The two associations had hoped to create a collaborative data flow agreement that would service both CBA’s CROSS:SCAN and ECPA’s PubTrack, but specific agreement details prevented final development of a workable joint business plan. Both CROSS:SCAN and PubTrack will continue serving their respective customers, and CBA and ECPA are committed to continued future collaboration.”

CBA president Bill Anderson cited the need to “honor existing contracts,” and ECPA president Mark Kuyper noted that “both parties invested tremendous time and energy into this process, and we’re disappointed that we weren’t able to create a viable business model.” Anderson declined to make himself available to answer questions about why the negotiations failed or who decided to end the talks, but Kuyper told RBL, “We discovered there was a component in the agreement that didn’t work for them and didn’t work for us, so the decision to walk away was mutual.” Kuyper would not identify that component.

CBA launched CROSS:SCAN in 2005 after retailers expressed fears that ECPA’s STATS (Sales Tracking Analysis Trends Summary)—since replaced by Pubtrack—was leaking information that might be used by competitors.

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