Case Studies

Pragmatix Provides Reliable and Scalable Print Order Process

Business Week is the most-read source of global business news and is McGraw-Hill's flagship publication under its Information and Media Group. With more than 8 million readers each week, including online and television viewers, it is the world's most widely read business magazine.

Business Issue

• Create an efficient system to gather and compile information from multiple sources
• Improve and ensure the flow of information
• Deploy a reliable web-based solution
• Integrate new technology into a semi-manual work flow

Business Results

• Reduced postage and labor costs
• Supports fluctuating data demand
• Improved work flow efficiencies
• Reduced average processing time from 20 minutes to less than 5

Business Week delivers content to a worldwide audience in whatever format best fits their needs. But, gathering and compiling the data required to produce the print run of Business Week is enormous. Each week, it turned into a last-minute rush of phone, email and fax requests with the potential for costly clerical and processing errors. The system, sadly outdated, also required manual intervention throughout the entire process. To complicate matters, newsstand and special copy requests were also manually processed and individually mailed as postage and special-handling costs escalated. The entire process was time consuming and expensive, resulting in poor recordkeeping and frustration on the part of Business Week's customers.

Pragmatix designed, developed and deployed a web-based system to manage the entire print order process. The system receives inputs from managers world-wide, electronic feeds from internal systems and file uploads from external vendors. The solution successfully improved the flow of information to fulfillment service bureaus and printers saving time and money. Print orders are sent to production plants and non-subscriber labels while electronic files are sent to those plants to be merged into the print run. The system collects requestor name, version and quantity, charge-back account information, one-time and repeating special requests in addition to recipient and shipping details.

The print order management solution now delivers an up-to-the-minute snapshot of the weekly print order. It provides a total number of copies to the manufacturing department and relevant print facilities, recipient information to service bureau/distribution coordinator, charge back information to the finance department, alerts for relevant users to input timely data. In addition, the application provides customized reports for all authorized users.

"Pragmatix was quickly able to understand and improve our Print Order process. The Pragmatix solution allowed us to cut our staff by one person, along with reducing the work load 20% by creating enormous efficiency, and eliminating the bottlenecks and weekly "scrambles" we used to encounter. In addition, we uncovered additional savings within the company."

Thomas Masterson, VP Worldwide Circulation Director, BusinessWeek