Lockside News Letter

Authors of

New office

and

update

Lockside has moved offices to a picturesque location next to the Kennet and Avon canal still beside a lock!

vCatalog the low budget option for smaller catalogues A.C.Leigh opted for vCatalog for their first venture into catalogues. With an exceptional range of architectural ironmongery, a quality catalogue is the only way to bring the best of their 20,000 plus stock to their customers.

The leading architectural ironmonger in the East of England, A.C.Leigh supplies Ironmongery for projects nationwide. They have 4 branches in East Anglia, each with highly experienced and well trained staff. Quality door handles and architectural ironwork is of such importance to architects that short of seeing and touching it, a catalogue is the only way to convey its quality. For their first attempt it was important not only to keep the expenditure to a minimum but to be able to update it without going through the pain of doing it all over again. vCatalog was exactly what they were looking for. Every company has a stock list and for those wanting to produce a catalogue that is the only starting point. The catalogue manager, Lloyd Bluett had the unenviable task of picking, describing and collating the products for the catalogue. The in-house system was of little help because like most stock control systems it has cryptic titles and little or no description. vCatalog’s image database eased the problem of relating pictures to products and being able to view what had been selected.

Lockside’s designers helped with the design of the catalogue as well as doing the layout and pre-press.

inside

New! vCatalog

Asset management!

Robinsons ramp up production with Catalog’nTime

The need for more publications, shorter lead times on products and less time between mailings called for a better way of producing catalogues. Delays to catalogues costs money, the larger the operation the greater the potential for loss.

Latest Dog Catalogue - 2007 P26 27 (TY2 3):Layout 1

18/10/07

16:17

Page 3

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TM

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Code: 03207

11. Wiggly Giggly Dumbell 03207

14. Wiggly Giggly RopeBall Code: 03207

£7.50

NEW

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12. Wiggly Giggly Jack

Code:

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The premier supplier of equestrian supplies in the UK, Robinsons produce 5-8 publications annually of up to 300 pages each. In addition to the catalogue, products are sold through their superstore near Haydock. A true multi-channel retailer, Robinsons need consistency of description, pricing and photography and a single source managing the core data. Catalog’nTime was chosen because of its ability to take data from other systems, helping Robinsons maintain a central repository for catalogue and web. Everything from catalogues to shelf-edge labels are done in-house, including photography, copy writing and proofing.

£4.50

£5.60

Wiggly Giggly Mini Ball

Code:

03209

£3.80

13 Wiggly Giggly Dental Toy Size:

Medium Large Code: 03206

£4.58 £6.05

Mint Flavoured Toy

18. GoDogGo Designed to provide hours of healthy exercise and enjoyment for your dog.

From the remote control, you can set GoDogGo to any one of the three modes. It will either automatically launch the balls every 7 or 15 seconds, or you can launch them manually at the press of a button.

15.

TM

Activity Sport

Play Time!

The hopper will hold fifteen balls (six provided with the unit) and launch distance can be controlled from fifteen to thirty feet. The unit requires six 'D' size batteries (not included) but comes with an AC adaptor (indoor use only).

NB: Not suitable for use near very young children when in automatic mode.

Col: Green £85.00 Code: 91904

order by phone 0870 420 3000

27

“We’ve cut 3 weeks off our main catalogue schedule and we are still new to the system!”

Jill Deane - marketing manager The success of the project is down to the enthusiasm and competence of Robinsons’s staff

to find out more...

For more information on any of the articles or products published in this issue contact us at: UK Office Canal House, Kennet Road, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 5JB Tel +44 (0)0845 0039244 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

‘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.6 Winter 2007

Lockside Software Ltd.

Introducing vCatalog

Timstar

A low cost hosted solution for catalogue production

T

Catalogue content on line all the time pay as you go

Browser interface

For companies seeking more control over their catalogue without bringing the process inhouse, vCatalog is the answer. It lowers the cost, simplifies the process and reduces the end to end production time.

Utilising Lockside’s catalogue software, the building of pages is highly automated. The order of the catalogue and the content is totally controlled by the client using the Internet browser interface and spreadsheets for bulk uploading of content. Updates can be made at any time and are automatically reflected in the DTP document, either Quark XPress or InDesign. Service packages are available, tailored to individual clients’ needs with or without printing.

“We don’t want to have to do our catalogue from scratch every time. We want to be able to update from our own system without doing it in-house”

Send us your data and your images and we will give you an on-line catalogue to maintain your catalogue content. We will produce your catalogue without any rekeying. You can even send us a price file for last minute updating. We work with you to choose sizes for product groups (like press ads e.g. 1/4 page landscape etc.), which are designed as templates. We run out test pages for approval and fine tune until the layout, colours, fonts etc. have all been approved. We then assign an ad to each product group using a matching process. The order of product appearance is determined by you on a spreadsheet supplied by us. Images are linked either from a list or visually - a list is much quicker. The rest is down to us and page production is very speedy, the speed however depends on the amount of re-working (if any).

8.

vCatalog process

John Hill, A.C. Leigh

Create printer’s PDF’s and upload to printer

1. Supply us with data

in spreadsheets from which we build your catalogue database.

Key features:

You maintain your data on-line or via bulk update - pictures attached automatically

price changes, automatically from on-line catalogue database

Client determines the order and appearance of the catalogue We either hand pages back to you for final layout or we produce the entire catalogue for you from proof to final printer’s PDFs

6.

Proofed pages hand finished to craft the final catalogue

2. Further supply

images and graphics which we match to existing data

3. Code each group

5.

4.

First on-line content proofs uploaded

Catalogue is automatically built from your data using the vCatalog engine

imstar supplies laboratory equipment to schools colleges and other educational establishments.

An established family company, they take pride in efficiency, promptness and the personal touch and realize that good systems and productivity are key.

The Managing Director, Phil Tomlinson set himself the task of shortening the time taken to produce the catalogue as well as driving the web and catalogue from their in-house system Khaos so that a single system would provide content for web and paper catalogues. A technically astute person, Tomlinson knew exactly how he wished to accomplish the task; it remained for him to find a solution that would meet his needs. Crucially he wanted the same content and grouping for the web, acknowledging that the web serves a different purpose and is used in a different way to a catalogue. The solution proposed was vCatalog PIM (product information management system) and WebPower vShop and vContent for the web.

With vCatalog catalogue production software the skill is building the templates that produce groups on pages. Who ever works with the software for the first time falls into the trap of assuming that Templates apply to page. Timstar quickly understood the issues and reduced the catalogue to four templates.

The great thing about dealing with Timstar was that they were very quick to understand and act on the concepts making the whole process much more dynamic. Lockside’s concept is not to write off the first catalogue as a learning experience but to ensure that the system provides savings from the start.

There is never any attempt to hide the “brain strain” aspect of catalogue production. Many prospective customers look for ease of use when they are evaluating software when they need power and flexibility. What is important is how efficient and how productive the software is, because that is where the return on investment comes from, a point entirely recognised by Timstar. A well designed PIM, (vCatalog) where products can be grouped and groups moved with ease makes the task more efficient, especially when data can be imported from spread sheets and pictures attached largely automatically.

The easy bit is the final production of pages. Using Catalog’nTime, page production rates can be up to 100 pages per day or better. Updating with final prices is an overnight job. Timstar made the job light work through meticulous preparation of images and content, minimising proofing.

Technical Corner Catalogue production systems are basically the same and its just down to ease of use and interface - true or false?

Catalog’nTime now supports InDesign CS3 and Quark XPress 7 for Macintosh and PC. New! support for automatic size, colour and size extraction from lists of products.

An example might be “Cashmere plain Zola Zip available in Black, Hyacinth, Flanel grey and Oatmeal, Sizes: 34”, 36”,38”, 40” and 42” which would be automatically created from a list of products. In the above case 25 product lines are reduced to a single descriptive paragraph. The steps would be to import a product list from the organisation’s main system, define the commas or spaces between sizes and what to do with the last size e.g. “and” or “or”and let the program do the rest, saving hours of time and the potential for errors. This is a major issue when interchanging data between systems

FALSE. Catalogue production systems tend to be bespoke systems that have a set of core functions and are then tailored around a customer’s needs to produce a specified catalogue or to manage a particular data flow. The way that each system does the task differs considerably. The only function common to all system is the production of DTP pages at the end of the process. The time taken to achieve it and the man days involved is what matters. A system that has a simple interface and is quick to learn generally lacks essential capabilities. By way of illustration, Microsoft Paint has none of the power of Adobe Photoshop, which is a professional application.

Every IT proficient individual knows the difference between Paint and Photoshop because they have tried them both. With major applications like catalogue production systems it is unrealistic to try multiple packages so you have to ask the right questions to learn the differences.

Client has full control over content - no re-typing. Pages are built automatically

7. Update with last minute text and

Single source for web and catalogue, what does it take?

of products using our simple template spreadsheet

Systems will excel at some tasks and under perform at others generally in line with what they were designed to produce in the first instance.

A well designed system will allow plenty of scope for changes to data structure and design. Questions such as does it support XML or is it compatible with MS Access have no correct answer because the real question is how flexible is the data mapping and can new fields be created as and when they are needed. A developer cannot risk giving the user access to their code and for this reason do not allow access to the database structure other than via a custom interface. Any data interchange that is done by a user requires an interface that gives secure access to the database without risking the integrity of the application. Software vendors are keen to tell you what their systems will do but are obviously reluctant to tell you what can’t be accomplished so it is down to the buyer to probe.

Email us at info.lockside.co.uk for a set of “key issues when choosing a catalogue production system”.

www.locksidesoftware.com