Case Studies

vCatalog at Work

Beechwood Creative Services and Lockside have saved Sun Educational Services over 40% of their publishing costs by providing a centralised managed publishing solution for their european operations

The task facing Sun Microsystems and Beechwood, their production house, was how to radically advance the publishing cycle of Sun’s 100 page training catalogues, printed in 21 editions, each with different content and in 13 different languages. Beechwood chose Lockside because of the company’s experience with automation of Quark XPress and also because they were able to provide a Web interface for editors and translators.

Sun wanted one point of input of the master copy and consistency of message, presentation and corporate ID. They had to have automated creation of marketing collateral with media neutrality to enable them to e-publish content to the Web, print and to e-mail. They also needed efficiency of print and post-production and a massively reduced time-to-market.
They achieved it all with vCatalog.

Centralising publishing reduced costs by 40%, centralising print by 65% and centralising distribution by 49%.Dealing with Beechwood meant 2 purchase orders rather than 44.
One year on, the system has produced over 70 publications each edited by marketing managers based in locations ranging from Helsinki to Budapest.

vCatalog Introduction, about the product

The Benefits, real benefits for our customers

How it Works, the 6 stages of publication production

Case Studies, vCatalog at work

A.C. Leigh

Based in Norwich, A.C.Leigh are architectural ironmongers and locksmiths specialising in high quality fixtures and fittings. Their products not only reflect the beauty and elegance of modern and traditional door furniture but cater for all aspects of home security. With four branches and a team of field sales executives a high quality catalogue is essential to help their clients visualise their substantial range.

Previous attempts at catalogue production had been unsatisfactory and wasteful. Gathering the information, images, specification and pricing is a daunting task. Lockside made the job easier by providing spreadsheet templates where the initial information could be gathered together.

vCatalog, import templates allow incremental importing of everything from image names to prices. The linking of images to products is automatic.

Once imported, data is immediately available on-line, via a standard browser. Any part of the product information set can be updated 24/7. New pictures or amended pictures can be uploaded and are automatically linked and updated in the catalogue.

All those involved can see pages in PDF format and make changes directly to the database, on-line. Additional proofs can be run at any time.

Last minute changes such as prices can be done on finished pages, without disturbing the artwork.