Prepress
Leading Swedish Regional Newspaper Group upgrades 170 Licenses to QuarkXPress 8
Thursday 07. May 2009 - Hallpressen produces first of its nine regional newspapers in QuarkXPress 8
Quark Inc. today announced that Hallpressen, one of Swedens leading regional newspaper groups, has chosen to upgrade over 170 licenses to QuarkXPress 8 across its nine newspapers. Hallpressen, the newspaper division of Herenco AB Group, has an impressive reach across southern Sweden with over 330, 000 readers on a daily basis, which represents seven out of ten inhabitants in the region. The daily newspaper, Värnamo-Nyheter, is the first Swedish newspaper to be produced in QuarkXPress 8 and the group aims to roll out QuarkXPress 8 across the remaining eight newspapers over the coming months.
“We are constantly looking to reduce costs while increasing quality and efficiency, which was a key reason we chose QuarkXPress 8 its redefined workflow increases users productivity, efficiency, and return on investment,” explains Johansson. “This is extremely evident in the redesigned user interface, which takes existing tools and expands their functionality in an intuitive way to make the user instantly more efficient at day-to-day tasks. All of these improvements mean that our users can now work faster and smarter, which is extremely important in a busy newspaper environment.”
QuarkXPress 8 now seamlessly integrates with Hallpressens new editorial workflow system, Newspilot from Infomaker, which was another key reason for their decision to upgrade. Infomaker is one of Scandinavia’s leading system integrators for newspaper and media companies and develops and delivers software, consulting, and training.
“Infomaker sees QuarkXPress 8 as a big step forward for the newspaper industry. We are happy that we have a strong and close relationship with Quark and are pleased to offer full integration with our NewsPilot editorial workflow system,” said Peter Månsson, managing director Infomaker Scandinavia. “These are challenging times for the newspaper industry and Hallpressen required a system that would offer a significant return on investment and provide the tools to help it streamline publishing processes, reduce costs, and increase overall efficiency that is why they chose QuarkXPress 8 and NewsPilot.”
“As long time users of QuarkXPress, we didnt even consider switching to any other application. The cost of switching is too much especially in the current economic climate and with the existing knowledgebase of the application within the organisation, it simply didnt make sense. We have always used QuarkXPress and have been happy with it, so why change,” said Christer Johansson, CIO Hallpressen. “The entire implementation process has been extremely painless and we were up and running within a very short space of time. Our staff required a minimal amount of training because they have been using QuarkXPress for many years and this familiarity really helped to ease the transition.”
“The newspaper industry is facing a very tough time and in an increasingly competitive environment, reducing costs and improving productivity are essential for survival. Quark has demonstrated with QuarkXPress 8 that it remains committed to providing solutions that will streamline publishing processes and increase overall efficiency for our customers,” said Matthew Wallis, Quark senior vice president of sales in Europe and Africa.