Knowledge Sharing: Five Minutes with Atul Goel, President of KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.

by Mike Groth

Earlier this month we announced the formation of KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd. (KGL), a new company with a long history as a content services provider, following the acquisition of Cenveo Publisher Services and Cenveo Learning by CJK Group. Today we talk to KGL’s president, Atul Goel, about how and why this acquisition came to fruition, what the implications are for the industry, and what we can expect from the combined company in the future.

MG: Tell us a bit about the formation of KGL.

AG: In a nutshell, KGL was formed following the merger of CJK Group’s existing content and technology divisions, Sheridan Journal Services and Sheridan PubFactory, with the recently acquired Cenveo Worldwide Ltd divisions, Cenveo Publisher Services and Cenveo Learning. The coming together of these companies, their product and service portfolios and their respective technology expertise means that KGL can now better support the needs of all publishing markets, with end-to-end solutions catering to everything from content creation right through to digital delivery and print distribution.

MG: Why did you decide to launch a new brand with a new name?

AG: While all the brands involved in the merger have really strong reputations and awareness in their markets (in addition to predecessors like Cadmus and its venture in India as the first incarnation of KnowledgeWorks Global Ltd.), we decided that the combined services of the new organization would be best unified under one distinct brand. As the market is changing and information providers are more focused on content services, we decided to create a company that was completely focused on the content business. With that goal in mind we wanted a name that allowed us to expand the range of services we offer in each of our current markets, as well as new markets. With the combined offerings of these four entities, KGL will be a content services powerhouse and the industry leader in transformative publishing solutions.

MG: What does the new company bring to the table?

AG: From a geographical perspective, the company has a truly global footprint, with major hubs strategically located across the US, UK and India. The merger means that KGL now has 200 years of combined publishing market experience under its belt and with 1,500 global employees across the business we now have a huge amount of resource and expertise to draw upon for the benefit of our customers. Coupled with all this, I think the strength and depth of our integrated offering makes KGL extremely well-equipped to help publishers solve their business problems, whatever their size or specialization. State-of-the-art technology and innovation is, and always will be, at the heart of everything we do and with intelligent automated solutions and delivery platforms such as Smart Suite and PubFactory now coming together in the KGL stable, we can expect great things.

MG: How will publishers benefit from the collective resources of the new company?

AG: Our book and journal publishing customers will reap the benefits of the formation of KGL in a number of different ways. While there will be no impact on day-to-day interactions with our teams and customers can expect to receive the same high level of service and quality they are accustomed to receiving, they will however now be dealing with a bigger and stronger, scaled up, globally competitive content services provider. There will be increased investment in our technology and solutions development, which will dramatically improve customer experience and help publishers solve their critical business problems. Furthermore, we also envision improved resource allocation, resource management and scalability to support the growing needs of customers as they adapt to constant change in each of the markets we serve.

MG: And finally, what is next for KGL?

AG: There are certainly some exciting times ahead, both in the immediate future and long term. We can expect new cutting-edge developments and innovations across our Smart Suite platform within the coming months, with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and author-friendly services becoming more extensively embedded in the technology. PubFactory is rolling out new roadmap developments supporting news, advanced multimedia, and robust new alerting functionality. Our corporate learning division, KnowledgeWorks Global Learning, has just been named to Training Industry’s 2020 Health and Safety Training Companies Watch List, and is releasing a virtual onboarding training interface for today’s remote workforce.

We believe the enhancements we are making will really revolutionize and streamline the way publishers produce content and interact with authors and other stakeholders in the delivery and consumption of content.

Atul Goel has spent three decades in operations management and technology development at KGL’s predecessors Cenveo Publisher Services and Cadmus Communications, working extensively with clients to develop global production solutions. He can be reached at info@kwglobal.com.