The vjoon K4 User Conference: How to Tame Complexity in Publishing

User stories, new features, and many positive impressions at vjoonity 2011
The vjoon K4 User Conference: How to Tame Complexity in Publishing

How do you tame the growing complexity of publishing processes and reduce time and cost pressure, today and for many tomorrows to come? That was the big question at vjoonity 2011, the 6th International vjoon K4 User Conference held in Hamburg. „Content has to be in the right format at the right place and at the right time. Or to use an analogy borrowed from logistics, publishers need content delivered just in sequence,“ says Andreas Schrader, CEO of vjoon. „The decisive factors necessary to accomplish this are end-to-end and flexible process control, extensive automation, and standardization. And vjoon K4 version 6 offers these factors.“

The some 130 people who took part in vjoonity 2011 had ample opportunities to see this statement substantiated in some intriguing presentations. The audience was treated to a preview of vjoon K4´s upcoming features, a review of Adobe and vjoon product strategies, and user stories about vjoon K4 in real-world publishing applications. Michael Zöllner offered a riveting report on the post-game action in sports publishing. Just 25 minutes after the final whistle blows, his publishing house manages to print an entire issue of kicker-sportmagazin, including all match results, at 13 locations. The vjoonity audience also learned how TatMedia, one of Russia´s largest regional media holding companies, makes the most of the Cross-Media Publishing Platform´s many benefits. And the communication agency köckritzdörrich provided an amusing and impressive account on how to put more horsepower under the hood of the premium car brand INFINITI and optimize the pan-European production of sales collateral.

Greater convenience for users and control of third-party systems

Speaking to the audience, Andreas Schrader divided complex publishing efforts roughly into three processes – firstly, planning, research and collection, secondly, creating and editing, and thirdly, provision and delivery. All these workflows, including those on third-party systems, have to be managed. „Today, vjoon K4 already enables users to publish with remarkable efficiency. However, our product strategy aims to provide even more comprehensive management capabilities for the entire process, while making tangible improvements that benefit the individual user,“ said Andreas Schrader. vjoon´s Christian H. Hollstein, Product Manager, and Holger Kraemer, Director of Business Development, explained how these abstract ideas are translated into concrete benefits in vjoon K4. Christian H. Hollstein not only presented the features that figure prominently in the current version of vjoon K4; he also previewed the upcoming release´s highlights. A case in point is K4 Collections: It enables contributors to plan and collect topics in any K4 client for any medium – print, tablet or web. The new layout view in the Query Panel facilitates editors and layout designers´ efforts. And K4 Captions & Credits automatically generates captions and credits based on metadata and templates.

Holger Kraemer demonstrated that third-party systems can indeed be integrated into the workflow. This practical example showed how K4 External Task Dispatcher sends images and the like to third-party systems for further processing, which are then returned to vjoon K4. The entire routine is automated. vjoon K4 „knows“ that this picture has to be retrieved from a third-party system because it is needed in the actual publishing workflow.

Holger Kraemer staged another impressive demonstration of automated processes interworking with third-party systems, this time to facilitate page planning. First he used a simple example to explain the concept behind the API, and then he showed how an XML-based page plan can be rendered in vjoon K4 relatively easily. Next up was Jens Baumgarten of dataplan, who also put on a live demonstration to show how the bidirectional interface between vjoon K4 and the professional planning system JournalDesigner works. The vjoonity attendees watched as changes in the planning system were applied in vjoon K4, and vice versa. Automated routines transform complex page plans in JournalDesigner into real publications in vjoon K4. Editors can move ads around at will and reformat entire layout sequences quickly and easily.

Publishing under massive deadline pressure at kicker-sportmagazin

„Saving time is a major issue for us, which is why we use vjoon K4 version 6 to publish print and tablet editions. The innovative workflow-based concept of vjoon K4 is a big help to us, and the integration of the Adobe Digital Publishing Suite also plays an important role,“ notes Michael Zöllner, Production Manager at kicker-sportmagazin. Germany´s most distinguished sports magazine is published under enormous deadline pressure. vjoon K4´s ability to automatically import the latest match results straight from the kicker database is a huge advantage. These data are updated at the touch of a button with the proper format in InDesign. The delivery window is tiny: The hardcopy issue rolls off the presses at thirteen different locations no more than 25 minutes after the final results of the day are in. Various tablet apps have also been created using vjoon K4 and the integrated Adobe Digital Publishing Suite (DPS).

Sophisticated sales collateral at INFINITI – a customer of köckritzdörrich

Berthold Dörrich, Managing Director, and Roland Klass, Account Director at köckritzdörrich, presented yet another exciting project. They used vjoon K4 version 6 to create the product literature for INFINITI – the Japanese car manufacturer Nissan´s premium car brand – in 19 local versions written in 14 different languages. „Such a great diversity of variants can only be mastered with vjoon K4. The Cross-Media Publishing Platform won us over with its user-friendliness, stability, and cost-to-benefit ratio – particularly when a service provider has to integrate a complex customer organization into such a system,“ says Berthold Dörrich. köckritzdörrich not only brought on board INFINITI Europe´s many contributors such as marketing and product management staff and the legal department. The agency also had to connect with a network of translators across Europe to publish the collateral in 14 languages. „With so many contributors, workflow transparency is the decisive factor. And that is precisely what vjoon K4 provides. It is especially important when the production time for a project as complex as this is just six weeks,“ adds Roland Klass. köckritzdörrich will soon also port the publishing process for tablet editions to the system. „We are in an excellent position to do this with vjoon K4 and Adobe DPS,“ notes Roland Klass.

More presentations on the agenda and a positive outcome

The media holding company TatMedia afforded deep insights into its publishing practices using vjoon K4. One of Russia´s leading regional media giants, TatMedia, produces 98 newspapers and 14 magazines. The Group also comprises 24 TV channels and 13 radio stations. „vjoon K4 enables us to save us time and costs throughout the process. Particularly the task-based workflows in version 6 make our work so much easier,“ says Dilyara Baychurina, Business Development Director at TatMedia. In another presentation, Dr. Marco Olavarria, Managing Partner at Kirchner + Robrecht management consultants, talked about trends and strategies in publishing. „State-of-the-art multichannel publishing requires a high measure of standardization. And such a system should be used as comprehensively as possible to achieve maximum effect in process optimization. In our experience, this can reduce costs by 25 to 33 percent,“ notes Dr. Marco Olavarria.

„vjoonity 2011 was a tremendous success. The insightful user stories and the many customer endorsements have once again shown that vjoon K4 is the right system for handling complex publishing processes efficiently. What´s more, the remarkable response and participation on the part of customers attests to the fact that this direct and recurring dialog is an important part of our community, and that it yields excellent results and a rewarding experience for all,“ notes Andreas Schrader.
A fixture on the publishing market since 1990, vjoon is a leading developer of workflow solutions based on Adobe Creative Suite. vjoon rapidly integrates all Adobe innovations into its solutions and consistently develops its products to meet market needs. vjoon’s flagship product vjoon K4 is one of the most innovative cross-media publishing platforms available in the market and lets you deliver your valuable content to any output channel – print, online, mobile, tablet. Based on the time- and cost-saving Unified Publishing Process vjoon K4 provides the tools that allow your team to publish anywhere, smoothly and efficiently – wether you produce magazines, newspapers, sales materials, annual reports or books. Renowned customers worldwide and in configurations from 10 to more than 1,200 concurrent users benefit from this sophisticated solution. Headquartered in greater Hamburg, Germany, vjoon partners with a global network of more than 30 qualified integrators to deliver premium system integration and support services to its customers.

vjoon GmbH
Nina Groth
Kieler Str. 103-107, Haus D
25474 Bönningstedt
ngroth@vjoon.com
+49 (0)40 556950-0
http://www.vjoon.com