Product category:
Printing Pre-Press Systems and Materials (Repro, Platemakers, CTP, Workflow, Document Management, Design Software, etc.)
News Release from: Stibo Graphic | Subject: Magazine and Catalogue Publishing
Edited by the Printingtalk Editorial
Team on 31 May 2004
Catalogues And Mags Must Be More
Innovative
In every industry, businesses are making increasing demands on technology in order to gain a competitive advantage.
In every industry, businesses are making increasing demands on technology in order to gain a competitive advantage In most cases, they are looking for a faster and cheaper way to get their product or service out to their customers or to improve process efficiency
This article was originally published on Printingtalk on 10 May 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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Uffe Hansen, sales and marketing director at Stibo Graphic explained why when he told delegates at the Seybold Seminars in Amsterdam that the industry must develop increasingly innovative ways of exchanging documents if the catalogue and magazine markets are to improve performance and reduce costs.
He said that achieving that would not necessarily mean reinventing the wheel, but was about fine-tuning what already exists.
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"The environment in which we do business is ever more sophisticated and refined and as a result competition is fiercer; so how do the star players move ahead and stay on top? The obvious answer is they find out exactly what their customers want and deliver to that requirement.
In many cases providing a cheaper product or offering the most advanced technology is a solution, but it could be that companies need to re-evaluate their current capabilities," said Hansen.
The latest print workflow management software provided a faster and more cost effective way for cataloguers and publishing houses to work he claimed.
"We can often link together issues that catalogue and magazine publishing companies have, but it is clear that for the future, their paths to success will follow in quite different directions.
In catalogue publishing, catalogue managers have been traditionally driven by the need to reduce production costs, increase speed to market, and publish to multiple channels, including print, CD ROMs, and the Web," he commented.
That had resulted in a continuing requirement to re-engineer more flexible workflows and production processes, which in turn had resulted in catalogues containing more accurate and up to date information, ensuring the client business retains its competitive edge, he continued.
Companies had been quick to embrace the benefits of the latest technology and the perceived power of the Internet had convinced some that the natural progression should be to move the majority of communication to customers in that direction continued Hansen.
Many companies decided to follow that lead, thinking that because everyone else was using the Internet to sell, why shouldn't they? But, warned Hansen, "many initial attempts were doomed to failure as companies attempted to sell via the Web with little initial planning, not necessarily in the most effective way and often created catalogues that don't work effectively on the Internet.
They have not looked at the reasoning or workflows required for it to work effectively to deliver multi-channel catalogues." However, he said it was true to say that catalogue companies needed to consider that customers still liked the printed catalogues coming through their doors - people don't read information on screen the same way they do when reading paper material.
Successful multi-channel catalogue commerce, including paper, required boundaries between traditional cataloguers and IT departments to be redefined.
It also required new approaches to the sharing of data internally, using a uniform file format.
He said that today's software gave catalogue managers the control that they needed.
Even five years ago, the ability to manage the complex and time consuming process of catalogue production to modern levels would not have been thought possible.
With the increasingly multi-channel sales environment, the use of software to refine and improve production workflows had enabled catalogue producers to increase their flexibility.
"Catalogue managers have the reassurance that what they have approved is what will be printed - whether as paper, Web or CD-ROM-based catalogue," said Hansen.
However, the challenges that magazines faced are very different.
Their aims and objectives are dissimilar as they have weekly and monthly publications with established production workflows.
The effects of a tougher commercial environment mean that magazine publishers needed to work smarter in order to maintain competitive advantage.
"In the European market generally, and especially in Scandinavia, we see lots of changes to B2B (business to business) magazines enforced by external factors.
They include reduced revenue from advertisers and increased postage costs brought about by changes in the status of national postal services.
In the past nationalised postal services have supported the distribution of B2B magazines through reduced printed paper rates, however many of these postage discounts have been withdrawn as part of deregulation of the postal services," said Hansen.
The harsher business environment is forcing magazine publishers to think about where they can make savings that do not involve increasing the cover price for subscribers.
That in turn means that magazine publishing companies are now constantly looking to improve internal efficiency by improving workflows, he added.
"With editors increasingly having to manage more relationships, for instance freelancer writers and photographers, creative departments and advertising agencies, magazines are being forced to change the way they work, but don't have a workflow which enables them to do this effectively.
The key challenge is to provide security, efficiency and control in time-consuming processes that will enable the magazine to concentrate on the real value creation tasks," observed Hansen.
"If magazines want to improve internal efficiency there needs to be a drive towards generic file formats - implementing successful collaboration workflows through PDF could be one option," he added.
He continued to note that at the magazine design layout and advertisement placement stage of producing a magazine there were many manual processes involving lots of different elements such as QuarkXPress, Adobe Indesign, Photoshop, JPEG and GIF which made the editor's job very complicated.
However, with today's technical possibilities, magazine publishing houses were able to collaborate via the Internet and also automate desktop applications, for example QuarkXPress to PDF and Adobe Indesign to PDF.
It was then possible to use PDF as an element container by placing all PDF elements to PDF pages, which is the final stage of the process when creating the final version of the magazine.
"The solution is not always clear-cut and catalogue and magazine publishers need to consider all aspects before making decisions on the way forward.
There has been a huge move over the last five years in terms of advanced technology but publishing companies for catalogues and magazines need to be careful not to let it take over," said Hansen.
"Technology is not always the answer - redefining what is already in place needs to be considered if companies want to gain a competitive advantage," he concluded.
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