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Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, a German media com­pany in Hannover, relies on WoodWing to produce a variety of publications with extremely demanding workflows.

About Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft
The publishing house, which was founded in 1747, has a rich history. Today it is a group of media enterprises, active on both the regional and national level, employing 1,000 people at 9 locations, and specializing in yellow pages, technical books and trade publications.

New solution
In autumn 2006, Schlütersche found itself at a technological "dead end". Ludger Simon, Director of Development and Technology, describes the situation: “We used a layout and editing system which ran only under Mac OS 9. As a precaution, we even had some spare Macs in stock, but we needed to find a completely new solution urgently. That’s when we discovered WoodWing's Smart Communications.”

Complex workflow
The Trade Publications division of Schlütersche has a complex workflow. External editors and graphic designers at the Augsburg, Mainz and Würzburg locations need to have access to the system. And for Norddeutschen Handwerk, a title with a circulation of about 100,000, the press representatives of eight Chambers of Commerce contribute their regional content simultaneously. Needless to say finding a trouble-free and dependable system was a top priority. IT Project Manager Mirco Albusberger adds another crucial requirement: “Our new editorial system had to integrate seamlessly with our existing Oracle database.”

Three-month evaluation phase
The team consulted major publishing companies on their decision. Three editorial systems made it onto the shortlist. Despite the complex requirements, the Schlütersche team, including editors, external authors and graphic designers, tested them thoroughly in only three months. Ludger Simon: “Compared with the competing products, Smart Communications had superior Oracle database support, and we could easily integrate it into our existing infrastructure. In addition, technological innovation was an important criterion.”

One-year transition phase
The new editorial system was gradually introduced, one title at a time, over the period of a year. Simon: “We wanted to closely monitor every stage of each new production.” This was particularly important for the titles of a recently acquired publishing house, which was still using the network file system instead of an editorial system. Although this required some major workflow changes, Enterprise was nevertheless adopted quickly and positively.

Around 110 employees currently use the system, approximately a quarter of them for layout work. External employees use 2Mbit Internet connections, enabling good full layout performance with four-page articles. If longer articles are necessary, it is possible to transfer only text.

Flexible license conditions
Schlütersche maintains a strict security concept. Each trade publication range (e.g. industry, technology or veterinary medicine) uses two application servers: one instance in the internal LAN, and one instance in the demilitarized zone (DMZ), controlling the database server. External employees can only access the DMZ server, thus shielding them from access to the internal network. It turned out that WoodWing offered a considerable financial advantage to support this concept. Simon: “The flexible license conditions were a nice surprise. We have five trade publication ranges, each with two instances. But instead of ten, only five licenses were needed.”

ProPublish
For the implementation of Smart Communications, Schlütersche relied on ProPublish AG, a leading independent system integrator and WoodWing partner from Hamburg. With more than two decades of experience in the press and publishing industry, they focus on editorial, layout and workflow solutions. Simon recalls them as: “A passionate team with highly trained specialists, managing to complete even large projects on time.”

A special workflow:
for Norddeutschen Handwerk, a joint journal of eight Chambers of Commerce, the press representatives contribute their regional content using remote access.

Future plans
Mirco Albusberger outlines the upcoming projects: integration of Enterprise with a page-planning solution, with a sales system, and with an archiving solution. Albusberger: “These projects are based entirely on our long-term confidence regarding this solution. We aim for a high integration level; everything should run completely dynamically.”

But even then, Ludger Simon has additional wishes: “Dossier tools are the basis for medium-independent production. We want to separate the journalistic process from the production process.” The innovation strength of WoodWing will pave the way.

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