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Authors of
and
update
to find out more... For more information on any of the articles or products published in this issue contact us at: UK Office 74 Bartholomew Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 5DU Tel +44 (0)1635 528303 Fax +44(0)1635 572889 Website www.locksidesoftware.com USA Office 505 Montgomery Street, 11th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111 Tel +1 415-874-3174 Fax + 1 415-874-3416
inside
PaperStream launch
ABB Pilot
Euroquipment reap the rewards from last year’s investment When it came to production of their 2003 catalogue, Euroquipment anticipated the benefits from last year’s implementation of Catalog’nTime.
Last year’s 680 page, award winning catalogue was created from scratch in record time. They expected the next edition to be significantly easier and they were not disappointed. This year’s catalogue was done in 5 weeks. The ability to update copy and prices automatically using
Catalog’nTime’s links to the group-wide product repository left only new products and changed pages to be done. The separation of design and data, unique to Catalog’nTime, meant that global graphical changes could be made to all pages if desired leaving the content
unaffected. Selective updating allowed individual groups of products to be added or removed, leaving the rest untouched or updated. The automatic table generator made the addition or deletion of products from tables a one click task.
How productive is it – really? Due to staff shortages we were called into a well known Tourist Board – a longstanding Catalog’nTime customer. The remit was to produce two catalogues, one of 32 pages and one of 64, up to proof stage. The job was done in three days. This is just one small example of the levels of productivity that are achievable with Catalog’nTime. It delivers savings with almost embarrassing speed and you might say that we couldn’t sell it if it didn’t but that is not necessarily the case. According to Computer Weekly quoting Gartner : 90%
of all enterprise resource planning (ERP) projects in the 1990s failed, as will 70% of all customer relationship management (CRM) projects initiated into 2005. The point is that software can sell well and still either never be used or fail to deliver the anticipated benefits. Equally there is software that is not on the “must have” list that will give a faster return and direct to the bottom line – and, by the way, we have never had an implementation fail.
If you have a reasonably large catalogue you could implement a system during the first quarter of 2003 and add to the bottom line in the same year – a tall order but from our experience to date we can quickly judge what returns are realistic given the catalogue and the circumstances. If the catalogue production department got the attention it deserved there would be savings and productivity for all and less stress for those within.
Our proposition to you is quite simple – the quickest route to profits is to cut costs.
‘Lockside Update’ was written, designed and published in-house by Lockside Software Ltd. All trademarks acknowledged. Lockside Software has used its best endeavours to ensure accuracy of content and believes all information and figures to be correct at time of print but accepts no liability for errors or emissions.
Issue No.2 Winter 2003
Lockside Software Ltd.
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Introducing
Travelscene, achieve big savings by bringing production in-house
Z4 PaperStream
™
Quickly
Create and publish all your paper catalogues and promotions
In multi-channel marketing re-use of data is a much more complex task than meets the eye. For example, there is any amount of space on a web page but limited space in a catalogue and still less space on television. Zygon Z4 is a best of breed product that excels in the enterprise management and segmenting of product data so that data elements are matched to the appropriate channel. It is driven by an Oracle database and can manage millions of products and their multidimensional information, offering client server and web interface access. It incorporates a whole host of modules and tools to facilitate the management
Accurately
Cost-Effectively
of product information, digital assets and campaigns. While the web is developing unstoppable momentum, with a few notable exceptions, it is still a minority channel. Paper, including catalogues, leaflets, advertising and instore notices, together with floor space outlets, still drives most sales. PaperStream empowers campaign managers to select product, associated descriptions and specifications and generate sales collateral using QuarkXPress®. Harnessing the power of two market leading products, Lockside and Zygon offer a winning solution for multi-channel enterprise marketing.
“There should be no human intervention to the paper publishing process unless it is to add incremental value”
Life has been tough in the travel trade this past year but Travelscene fully realised their investment in Catalog’nTime and have ended up ahead of the game.
It has also enabled us to produce entirely new, targeted, publications in a fraction of the time and with less of the frustration we used to have prior to Catalog’nTime.
They have succeeded in bringing brochure production and Web updating in-house. Using Catalog’nTime as a data repository to keep both the paper publications and the Web up to date, they enter all data in one central data source from which the chosen elements are used for the appropriate output. In a year and a half the system has become an integral and indispensable part of the marketing effort. Said Paula Martin, Marketing Services Manager –
“Without Catalog’nTime we could not have come close to achieving either the cost targets or tight production schedules we were aiming for.
“Without Catalog’nTime we could not have come close to achieving either the cost targets or tight production schedules we were aiming for.
Knowing that the data comes from our own repository, proofing time is substantially reduced and copy errors all but disappear.”
Peter Landale, Founder Zygon
8.
PaperStream in action
Flow in last minute changes and send to print
1. Acquire and control all product information
Implementing on-line editing for properties in our annual holiday guide is an important step and a logical progression in our use of Catalog n'Time.
PaperStream provides: Easy acquisition, aggregation and editing of all product information
7.
Fast access to all product information for any paper communications
Output to QuarkXPress ™
Streamlined campaign management with a high degree of automation
2. Enhance
Rapid production of richly formatted catalogues and promotional material
6.
and enrich
Select or create design templates for each output
3. Plan for each output
4. 5.
Produce briefs
ELTB
Select products and content
Edinburgh and Lothian Tourist Board are one of Lockside’s longest standing customers. With over 800 members and some 40,000 pieces of data, proofing is a substantial responsibility. Despite the low error rate afforded by Catalog’nTime there remains the annual task of outputting, collating, posting and updating. Said Stephen Crowe, Marketing Manager “implementing on-line editing for properties in our annual holiday guide is an important step and a logical progression. Although we may never achieve a "self-producing" catalogue GlobalEdit takes us as close as is possible to that ideal. It does so by removing production staff from data amendments and giving our advertisers direct on-line responsibility for the content of their advertisement”. “Following the introduction of the software we had reached a stage where the error rating for our catalogue was consistently very low (the average over a three year period was 3 data errors in 40,000 pieces of data). However, errors were still occurring where production staff misinterpreted ambiguous instructions on final proof sheets. When GlobalEdit is rolled out to all advertisers we expect to achieve a zero error rating something that was impossible to even think about when the catalogues were produced manually”.