The eClips service continues to grow at a staggering rate. With Q3 07 only two thirds complete, the traffic growth, when compared to Q3 in 2006, is an astonishing five times higher than just a year ago. This growth can be attributed to more PCAs, more organisations and more users being added to the eClips service every month. Also, an increase in the content available through eClips has been driving greater usage of the service.

In July, Durrants was added to the list of eClips subscribers and August has seen Cision, IPCB and Vocus go live with the service. This is fantastic news for the industry and for the publishers as more clients move to digital delivery of their press cuttings. The increase in PCAs using eClips has meant that in July and August, 361 new organisations and 4,303 new users were added to the eClips database. Including these additions, there are now 4,270 organisations and 28,806 users registered to use eClips.

Here are some additional statistics related to eClips:

• Pages produced: July - 86,301, August - 89,862
• Articles produced: July - 290,770, August - 301,197
• eClips Client Viewings: July - 286,236, August - 400,128

With the growth of the eClips service, there have been many challenges that the NLA digital team have faced. As more users and PCAs utilise the service the level of quality has been scrutinised even further. Clippings quality increased slightly from July to August, but it was still found that 2.78% of articles within the service do not meet the quality expectations. Work has been undertaken to improve the quality and a recent upgrade to some of the NLA production software has eliminated one of the largest contributors to poor quality clippings; thumbnail issues. With this fix and others, I am hopeful that in September, we will finally see the clippings quality KPI met (98%).

As the NLA works to improve content quality we have also recently implemented a process for PCAs to request sub-standard articles to be reprocessed. It has taken a couple of months to establish a solid process and the benefits are now being realised. In July, a total of 924 articles were requested to be reprocessed. In August, this number dropped to 476. This decline can be attributed to improved clippings quality as well as an agreement between the NLA and PCAs regarding what content is included within the eClips service. A very successful meeting was held in August where members from many of the eClips PCAs and the NLA production staff discussed potential changes to eClips content guidelines. More meetings are planned for the coming months and I hope that the result will be more satisfied customers as well as an increase in respect for the work that the NLA undertakes.

The NLA team continues to meet clients needs by resolving important issues. In July, a new eClips search engine was deployed for users of the Access Model service. This search engine is vastly improved in terms of relevance, speed and ease of use. If you are interested in adding this functionality to your eClips XML service please contact James O'Connor.

In August, the NLA resolved a very important issue for many of the PCAs. All Financial Times content is now viewed through eClips without a 'pink' background. Many clients complained that the background colour affected the quality of printed and faxed eClips articles from the FT.  Also, we have added the ability to view a 7 day rolling history of content that is missing from the eClips service. To view these details, click here. Although these issues took quite some time to finally resolve, I hope that users of eClips are now happier with the service as a result of these improvements.

With regard to performance, the eClips service continued to meet and beat KPIs during the month of August. All content delivery targets and service performance metrics were met. In fact, most delivery statistics outperformed the targets significantly. For example, weekday content was loaded into the eClips system at a rate of 30% by 10PM and nearly 60% by midnight. It is also now possible for eClips XML service subscribers to receive content earlier in the evening. Once again, if you are interested in receiving this additional service, please contact James O'Connor.

For details regarding eClips service performance in August, please review this document.

If you have any questions or concerns about the eClips service, I am always available for your queries.

Regards,

matt groshong | production and services director, digital | newspaper licensing agency | times square 160 queen victoria street ec4v 4bf
direct line 0207 332 6041 | switchboard 0207 332 6036 | fax 0870 333 7131