Come see whats new at the FOLIO show

Were pleased to debut the release of Publishers Studio Professional Edition at the FOLIO Show September 24 26 at the Marriott Marquis, NYC. Visit us at Booth Number 302 and explore the potential for your publishing business.

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Hosted workflow management solution improves collaboration, speed and accuracy for Rodale.

With staff located in two states, Rodale faced some challenges in producing three of its titles -- Men's Health, Best Life and Women's Health. The company was looking to streamline some of its processes, including file management, accessing files from two separate servers and meeting ever increasing stringent deadlines. Rodale sought a more effective networking and management solution for its creative and production workflow between multiple locations..

Solution

Publishers Studio hosted solution from QuadSystems

Results

> Simplified, speedier issue planning and production

> Easier process for ad insertions

> Enhanced ability for staff to work remotely

> An extra plus: elimination of downtime due to IT CHALLENGES

As the authoritative global content company in health and wellness, Rodale reaches more than 70 million people worldwide. Rodale publishes 8 magazine titles, is the largest independent book publisher in America and is a leader in direct response marketing. Its brands extend into various other media formats, including video, TV and the Internet.

Background. Like more than half of the countrys top 100 publishers, Rodale uses QuadSystems Impoze software for the planning, manufacturing and distribution of its titles. Impoze streamlines and condenses workflow through planning, production, printing and distribution, cutting significant time from the production cycle.

However, three of Rodales titles faced a special challenge. Mens Health, Best Life and Womens Health are produced by staff working out of Rodale locations in Pennsylvania and New York. Sharing files between two locations is time consuming, says Sue Signorello, Manager of Print Production. Since we work on two different servers, we were having a lot of speed issues and problems with files getting locked up in the check-out system.

QuadSystems proposed a hosted solution to the publisher. After switching to Publishers Studio hosted on QuadSystems centralized server, file management, planning and laying out the issues took a positive turn. The hosted system is faster, easier to use and has greatly reduced the difficulties of sharing files remotely.

Working well together. Apart. Its made a major difference, Ms. Signorello says. Going through the Internet has really sped up the process. More than that, its reduced the hassles. Publishers Studio provides an instant recognition that a file is in use. Plus, the check-in, check-out process is simplified, speedier and more reliable.

Housing files or traveling between separate servers created some difficulties. Publishers Studio eliminates the possibility of working on a file that is not the most current. It definitely makes sure were working on the most up-to-date version of a file, Ms. Signorello notes. Its reassuring to know were producing these titles completely in sync from two different locations. Our advertising staffs in both Pennsylvania and New York realize tremendous benefits because everyone is operating on the same page with real-time, accurate information.

That real-time collaboration translates to other remote locations as well, according to Ms. Signorello. Another advantage of the hosted solution is being able to access files from anywhere, any time, she says. All you need is the Internet and a password. If someone is traveling or working at home, its so much easier to dial in and work on the issue now. That really helps our workflow, too.

A beginning-to-end solution. Publishers Studio not only helps us map out the issue, but we also use it to manage our entire print order and our regional and demographic ad versions, Ms. Signorello points out. These solutions help for a title like Men's Health that can have as many as 44 versions. Its a great tool to help us track and manage the complexity of versioning. We also run our subscriber file and import all the accounts through the system. We used to do all this manually. So our accuracy with our print order has greatly improved.

IT backup an added plus. With QuadSystems hosted solution, Rodale is not faced with day-to-day, time-consuming and expensive IT maintenance. We dont worry about downtime, Ms. Signorello states. If theres a problem, QuadSystems just goes online, sees the issue themselves and corrects it from there. They also keep us up-to-date with any software upgrades. They deploy them during non-business hours so its seamless to us.

A beneficial connection. Ms. Signorello feels that using Publishers Studio in a hosted environment offers major advantages for the two Rodale teams. The biggest benefit is probably the improved workflow we've achieved, she says. But the ability to better meet our deadlines is important, too.

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Publishers Studio
Brings New Level of Workflow Integration

With the insight you can expect from a software provider with
in-depth knowledge of publication workflow, QuadSystems is now offering its newest and most comprehensive solution, Publishers Studio.

Publishers Studio is our next generation of Impoze and AdSync, augmented to become your end-to-end publishing solution. It is a single enterprise application that eliminates the redundancies present in many publishing workflows by allowing advertising sales and production departments to work in one application. As a result, your employees have real-time access to all the data critical for publishers to make up-to-the-minute decisions about their business. For many years, Impoze has been the markets default application for magazine production planning, while AdSync was developed with insider knowledge of how publishers manage the entire sales process all the way up to invoicing. Both products are currently synchronized in a publishers environment.

In addition, QuadSystems has designed the software to include an open architecture interface for ultimate flexibility in enabling two-way integration with other systems and solutions, including Editorial workflow applications, General Ledger systems and CRMs. Special Analytical Services using data warehousing will also be available for competitive analysis and budget modeling.

QuadSystems has already started to convert its current customers from its AdSync program to Publishers Studio. As the remaining production functionality is added to the program, we will be able to migrate all of our Impoze customers in 2008.

For more information about Publishers Studio e-mail sales@quadsystems.com or call 1.866.246.7693.

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Improving ROI with Catalog Studio

In the wake of rising postal costs and with increasing pressures from competitors, how can a cataloger decrease costs and increase response? It all comes down to one question: Where is your stuff?

Lets break stuff down into two categories: data and content. In this context, data is the information on your buyers and prospects (transactional, demographic, etc.) and content is your images, copy, pricing, etc.

On the content side of this equation, there are four key questions to look at:

1. Where are your images?

2. Where is your copy?

3. Where is your pricing?

4. And then the linchpin: How are these different components connected to each other and to the final InDesign page?

If you want to produce more pages in less time with fewer people, these questions should become a priority to answer and to address.

Enter QuadSystems Catalog Studio content management solution. Catalog Studio provides a clean, simple interface on the surface of a dynamic and flexible database to store, manage and edit content. Rather than managing individual assets, Catalog Studio takes the approach of managing products and associating assets to these products. By doing this, it enables the system to maintain more complex data associations, while still displaying them to the user in an intuitive fashion. For example, type in SKU 1234ABC and it will display all copy and image options for that product.

Catalog Studio also enables connections to other sources of data in your organization. For example, if pricing data is stored and managed in a separate corporate database, Catalog Studio can have the pricing field driven directly by this external data eliminating errors caused by rekeying or price changes that happen in the database after they have been keyed into the application document.

Having the data stored and managed centrally is only the first building block. Once this is in place, the team that plans a catalog now has access to this data. Instead of merchants referencing previous print jobs or referencing products only by code, they now have access to the actual assets and can communicate clearly with the creative/production team to show not only which product they want on which page, but also which specific image and copy for that product should be used. From a production standpoint, the process of searching through folders on servers to find copy, etc for a product is eliminated. All the content they need for that page is already reserved and associated by page and ready for production. This also eliminates the need for production to interpret or,
worse yet, guess which specific copy block, image and/or presentation the merchant intends for
that product.

Now for the automation part Catalog Studio includes a tagging module that enables production to create any number of templates that are preset InDesign layouts showing how the image and copy will be laid out for a particular product. When building a page, the designer simply needs to select a template, choose the product that the merchant has associated with the page and the automation begins. Images are imported from the database into the template picture window, and copy is flowed and formatted from the database
into the text block. As corrections are made to copy, pricing, etc. in the database, these corrections can
then simply be updated to the application document to ensure the accuracy of that final page that makes
it to press.

So where does the data come into play? In our next stages of development, we will be creating links between the data and the content enabling catalogers to use business and client transactional information like RFM, square inch analysis, demographics, geographics, etc. to automatically drive how content is populated to the page or even Variable Data Printing press. In this environment, catalogers will finally be able to accomplish the goals of decreased costs and increased response.

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PlanSystem3 Update: Web Solutions

Beginning later this year, PlanSystem3 users will have the option of editing their Adobe InCopy dispatch jobs through a Web browser. Van Gennep M.A.C. (the company that developed PlanSystem) has created a Web editor that utilizes Adobe InDesign Server in the background to allow Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox users to edit text boxes that have been dispatched from InDesign layouts stored in PlanSystem3. Dispatching allows a designer to continue to work on the layout while another user edits the text on the page. Eventually, the Web editor will be able to work on all InCopy files in PlanSystem3, not just dispatch jobs.

QuadSystems, the exclusive North American reseller for PlanSystem3, has scheduled the Web editors North American release for the fourth quarter of this year. The Web editor will be part of WebSolutions, a browser-based approach to PlanSystem3. Gerda Oppewal, Van Genneps director of product management and customer operations, said the idea for the Web editor came from several sources, most notably PlanSystem3s German reseller. Of course, we were working on WebSolutions in general, she said. So in that idea, the Web editor fit in well.

Oppewal added that the Web editor could eliminate the need to install InCopy on users machines, saving money on InCopy ($249 per license) and saving time for IT staffs. To use the Web editor, customers first will need to install PlanSystem3.7 (formerly known as PlanSystem3.6.6). PlanSystem3.7 which is also slated for its North American release in the fourth quarter is a free upgrade for customers with a current maintenance and support contract. Then, customers will need to buy a WebSolutions license ($5,000 per site) and concurrent licenses for Web editor users. The cost of the Web editor licenses which hasnt been determined yet for the North American market will include the InDesign Server license.

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