Concentra Media

“Publishing group achieves simplified, transparent advertising workflow with CaslonFlow”

Life in the publishing industry is no bed of roses. With ever increasing competition and squeezed margins to boot, publishing groups across Europe are forced to optimize their organizations and workflows in order to remain competitive.

As publisher of a large number of daily regional newspapers, magazines and door-to-door papers, CONCENTRA Media, one of Belgium’s largest media publishing groups, has a multitude of complex work structures that criss-cross each other every day, begging for a transparent, user-friendly solution. One of the company’s most demanding daily responsibilities is the production of an ultra-high volume of ads for its many publications. This extreme production schedule demands constant investigation into ways in which the complex flow of files can be processed faster and more efficiently.

In 2002, CONCENTRA Media decided to refocus on core strategic goals, restructure its organization and streamline its work procedures and structures in order to remain competitive during hard times in the industry.

To help simplify and optimize its advertising workflow, CONCENTRA Media soon after turned to Gradual Software’s CaslonFlow to assist with the automation of routine production tasks.

Graphic Systems Manager Tony Nouwen and technical coordinator Mathie Neven had been searching the market for a while for a software solution that would help them simplify and streamline the ad production process.

Whereas previously the follow-up of all file movement in the production process was done across ten Mac-workstations, which implied an enormous amount of hidden time-loss, the duo now aimed to find a software solution which would enable them to bundle and automate this file traffic in a transparent, user-friendly way.

After a careful investigation of the automation products available on the market, Nouwen and Neven unanimously agreed to invest in Gradual Software’s CaslonFlow. “It was quite simple,” states Tony Nouwen, “CaslonFlow answered all our needs and more….and it offered us an excellent price/quality ratio, which was also of key importance in our choice.”

 

Centralized automation at your fingertips

CONCENTRA Media converted all existing, independent data-flows in the advertising department to CaslonFlow, ensuring that all file traffic passes through the software for optimum quality and efficiency. Currently the company runs a preflighting flow, three print flows, one post-ad flow and one general post-page flow in CaslonFlow.
The new work method provides production employees with a clear overview on all file traffic, while the ten Mac-workstations which were previously used to control these transfers, have been replaced by a single CaslonFlow workstation.

Nouwen and Neven are very positive in their judgment: “This is a great automation solution. The software is very stable in comparison with the software we used previously, which means we have realized significant time gains. In addition, the software is transparent and user-friendly. Even testing new flows is easy. We can quickly set up new test-flows that can be seen by all operators, which in turn means everybody can help think of ways in which to improve our work methods.”

“The flexibility in the usage of CaslonFlow is excellent,” confirms Mathie Neven, “we simply experiment with creating our own flows until we have found the method that best suits our needs. Once a flow has been created, it is also very easy to copy it to a new flow, which is of course very interesting when one produces multiple comparable magazines.”

Automation is vitally important in helping organizations remain competitive. Implementing CaslonFlow is one of the key elements that allowed CONCENTRA Media to successfully restructure in function of its enhanced working methods. Thanks to CaslonFlow, the company was able to implement a much more efficient workflow that allows it to process data faster and more efficiently, ultimately enabling the group to realize projects both in less time and at a lower cost to the company. The ultimate goal was achieved effortlessly: connecting stand-alone production islands and automating routine tasks to win time and eliminate errors.

Credits

This testimonial was created in collaboration with ICT specialist COMIT (www.comit.be) and CONCENTRA Media (www.concentra.be).

PDF Version

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