Digital Textbooks | News

Rafter Adds Wholesaler Rebate Integration, Expands Supply Chain

• By Tim Sohn
• 02/28/13

Rafter has added new features to its education content management platform, which provides schools access to traditional textbooks, as well as digital and mobile material.

The Rafter platform includes Rafter Adopt, for faculty adoption of books; Rafter Discover, to search for and adopt new, used and rental digital content; Rafter Supply, for college bookstores to purchase course materials at discounted prices; and Rafter EasyRent, a cloud-based software for in-store, online, and mobile rentals.

According to the San Mateo, CA-based company, Rafter helps students save money on textbooks and other materials, and provides an integrated platform for faculty to manage adoption of materials.

New features include:

• Integration between college bookstores and all wholesaler rebate programs through Rafter EasyRent;
• Expansion of its supply chain through Rafter Supply to include 140 million titles and 150 suppliers from publishers, wholesalers, distributors, and other bookstores at discounted costs; and
• A streamlined Rafter Adopt interface to help faculty adopt new titles.

"We've witnessed firsthand how complex and rife with inefficiencies the textbook supply chain is, and the resulting higher costs all too often fall on the shoulders of our students--those that can least afford them," James Kielty, CFO of the University Cooperative Society at the University of Texas at Austin, said in a prepared statement. "Rafter allows us to aggregate all parties on a single platform and remove the roadblocks standing in the way of bringing our students the most affordable educational materials. We've already saved our students more than $3.7 million using Rafter. These new product updates will only help us build on that total."

"For the first time ever, I've actually received emails from my faculty telling me how much they love using Rafter for course adoptions and how easy it is for them to understand," said Kerry Kirk, bookstore director at Everett Community College, in a news release about the update.

For more information, visit rafter.com.