Enfocus Crossroads Testimonial - The Economist Newspaper

How did Enfocus Switch help The Economist?
In short:

• Enfocus Switch automates repetitive tasks and reduces errors
• Helps to meet critical deadlines
• Enables connection to a variety of tools already used in the organization
• Avoids the need to turn to third-party developers

A Look at…The Economist
Established in 1843 and edited in London, The Economist is an internationally-renowned (and distributed) weekly news and business publication offering reporting, commentary and analysis on world current affairs, business, finance, science and technology, culture, society, media and the arts. The publication is printed in five countries, with worldwide circulation just under 1.5 million.

With circulation so large and geographical outreach so wide, The Economist is always looking to improve processes for more efficient operations. One of those improvements resulted from the decision to replace its existing advertisement preflight workflow with a more flexible and comprehensive alternative.

Enter the solution: Enfocus Switch automation technology
The Economist reports that Enfocus Switch allows the company to automate repetitive tasks and consequently reduce errors with improved efficiency. Switch also connects a variety of standard applications within the many different system configurations in use at the organization.

Robert Banbury, Production Project Development Specialist at The Economist, says, "After considering all available automation systems at the time, our decision to choose Enfocus Switch was influenced in part by its ability to integrate with third-party applications, giving us the choice of some of the best available technology then and into the future; and also the easy-to-follow graphical user interface. Value was one of the more important factors in our final choice, but quality is always our priority."

Switch is used primarily to move and duplicate files, often using metadata to create new folder structures and route files. Utilizing over 50 active flows, the range of applications Switch automates includes repurposing of PDF pages and images, preflighting editorial and advertising PDFs, and FTP file transfers.

Critical to long-term user success with Switch, Banbury says, is the Enfocus Crossroads community. Growing and evolving with some of the industry's foremost vendors, integrators and users of Enfocus Switch automation technology, the site exists as an open forum where ideas and flows are shared to further maximize the solution's capabilities.

Banbury says that the Enfocus Crossroads site is garnering much needed, and deserved, attention. "Promoting the open exchange of ideas and solutions amongst the Enfocus Crossroads community," he says, "should ensure that Switch and other high-value automation partners are brought to the attention of the wider publishing and media world."

Initially, Switch ran on one live server and provided an advertising-based preflight and proofing replacement for the publication's previous system. Now, four servers run a range of Switch flows supporting everything from advertising and editorial production, through to data transmission and archiving.

Banbury and his colleagues have created flows connecting Adobe Creative Suite applications and callas pdfToolbox server themselves. "For instance," Banbury says, "we use Switch to pull advertising files from an external FTP server, every 3 minutes. These files are then routed to appropriate folders using metadata embedded within. Three sub-level folders, according to the type of advertisement, its issue date and the regional edition it is to appear in, are also created."

"This expansion has been possible because of the benefits that automation has brought to all of The Economist's users and the positive feedback it has elicited."

Banbury reports much success with Enfocus' unmatched automation technology. "Switch has become increasingly important for the newspaper's production as the need to move, check and repurpose data and assets for other media outlets has come to the fore.

"Automation has removed many manually repetitive tasks from users, freeing them to concentrate on other important matters, and enabling them to meet critical deadlines. Lead times have been improved together with a reduction in errors." Banbury adds that the publication team has been able to develop sophisticated workflow solutions in-house, avoiding the need to turn to third-party developers.

Bottom line
"Switch will remain a core application for the foreseeable future," Banbury states. "Its ability to link other applications in easily-managed workflows, whilst utilizing XML and metadata, makes it a key system tool."