Prepress
Communications agency PRH Hamburg transforms its publishing process with Quark Publishing System 8 and dio:content giving clients direct web access to track projects
Wednesday 24. November 2010 - With the dynamic publishing capabilities of Quark Publishing System 8 and the asset management solution dio:content, PRH has streamlined its workflow and integrated customers and translators into the publication process
Quark Inc. announced today that the German communications agency PRH Hamburg GmbH has streamlined the production of their corporate publishing publications using the dynamic publishing capabilities of Quark Publishing System 8 (QPS 8) and the asset management solution dio:content, as well as strengthened collaboration with customers and translators.
PRH Hamburg produces international customer magazines, employee magazines, online magazines, corporate books and films, as well as providing its clients with creative digital solutions.PRH Hamburg can number among its clients Daimler, eBay, Lufthansa Cargo, E.R. Schiffahrt and Görtz. PRH’s corporate publishing magazines are characterised by award-winning high-quality design: the agency has won several international prizes and thanks to its customer magazines “Mercedes-Benz Transport” and “eBay seller” it has recently been nominated for the German Design Award 2011.
Since its foundation, PRH has relied on QuarkXPress and in 2009 decided to optimise its publication processes by adding QPS 8. Before implementing QPS 8, PRHs IT management team carried out an in-depth analysis of the competition. Holger Bartsch, IT manager with PRH, reports: “Of course we looked at other publishing solutions as well. Support for QuarkXPress, which some of the competitors could not offer, was crucial in deciding for QPS 8, together with other key factors.”
Because clients, as well as PRH’s different internal departments, have a variety of varying requirements on asset management, PRH uses QPS 8 integrated with dio:content – an asset management solution from picturesafe media/data/bank GmbH. “To integrate QPS 8 with dio:content is a good approach for us. QPS writes directly into the dio:content database and retrieves data from dio:content. Paired with QPS’s powerful workflow and collaboration, this provides us with an ideal, efficient workflow”, comments Holger Bartsch.
The changeover from the former process to a workflow based on QPS 8 and dio:content proceeded smoothly and without any disruption to the production processes. Thanks to QPS Web Hub, PRHs clients can now follow the production progress as it happens. Coordination processes have been sped up and layout can be approved online quickly and conveniently. Translators working around the world write their copy with QPS Web Hub directly into the layout in the correct length, which you can see in the preview in its binding line format. “QPS Web Hub for us is the central feature, which considerably facilitates collaboration with clients and translators”, acknowledges Holger Bartsch.
For the online version of their corporate publications, PRH automatically retrieves content from QPS via a self-programmed engine in Flash (SWF) projects. Because the architecture of QPS is based on open standards, additional publishing modules such as these can be easily added or QPS can be incorporated into existing IT structures and be integrated with other business applications, such as dio:content. Matthias Gilke, Marketing Manager Central Europe at Quark, comments: “With QPS and dio:content, PRH has at its disposal a first class dynamic publishing solution, in which the creative potential of QuarkXPress 8 is combined with the benefits of a standardised, automated workflow and professional asset management.”