Contract composition can be worthwhile

The German SAPRO company in Gutenacker, near Frankfurt, produces more than 2500 pages weekly for magazines and daily newspapers, making it one of the most highly productive composition companies in the German print media industry. Directors Markus Schulz and Wilfried Wehnert and their team have built up an efficient composition and layout production that is growing continually.

The company’s customers include the Mittelrhein publishing house in Koblenz (Rhein-Zeitung), Bonner Generalanzeiger, Rheinische Post in Düsseldorf, Paul-Parey publishing house,” Such & Find”, one of the best-known classified ad newspapers in Germany, and the Rhein-Main publishing group (Mainz and Wiesbaden). SAPRO acts as a classical full-service operation for ad composition, layout, make-up, scanning and digital ad processing. In order to facilitate customers, says Schulz, SAPRO has set up a call centre to ensure that everything starting with ad-taking is directed to the correct workflows in each case.

Besides the main company in Gutenacker, SAPRO also has two subsidiaries in Koblenz and Mülhein/Kärlich. The ad-taking offices immediately scan-fax the customer copy to the headquarters. Later on, the finished ads automatically enter the database of the newspaper publishing house concerned. In the background SAPRO controls the automatic dispatch via e-Mail of proofs and realises a total ad workflow.

CaslonFlow from Gradual Software provides the link here. SAPRO stays in contact with the remote offices via a dedicated line. Data is received via e-Mail, ISDN or FTP. In production, CaslonFlow monitors the different in baskets and directs the data towards the correct workflow. Thanks to Caslon Flow, says, it is possible to react very flexible to special customer wishes. Nearly every customer has a workflow matched to his requirements.

Responsible for designing workflows and for the entire IT division at SAPRO is Markus Schütz. The 30-year-old IT administrator works with CaslonFlow to control production. For him, it is especially advantageous that CaslonFlow not only manages file routing, but also visualises the workflow concerned. This makes control and error analysis a lot easier, says Schütz. He first saw the product at an exhibition. The version that was available at that time, version 3.0 (today 5.5 is offered on the market), was installed within one week. Thus the company has been working with CaslonFlow since mid-2004.

As Schütz explains, CaslonFlow not only steers the files in the workflow, but also initiates conversions, e.g. from EPS to PDF and vice versa, carries out data checks via Enfocus Pitstop Server, sends control messages and manages data transmission via FTP. Schütz continues: “In the case of one customer, we did the data input by the number of colours in the subsequent newspaper print. It is especially important to the customer for his workflow in the printing plant that the colours are re-named, so that a clear assignment is possible at all times.”

CaslonFlow also passes on the data to the own-developed job manager that is used mainly for ad and object management. Besides its own production, SAPRO also handles digital ad acceptance for its newspaper and magazine customers. This means that an additional approximately 2500 ads per week are digitally directed into the correct workflows. Then there are also 220,000 classified ads for “Such & Find” – all in all, CaslonFlow is used to manage about 40 different workflows, says Schütz.

SAPRO uses Cicero and QuarkXPress systems for ads and layouts. A workflow system that only allows homogeneous workflows is “unthinkable for us”, adds Schütz. The company must satisfy a wide range of different requirements for the publishing houses and for this reason decided in favour of a highly flexible tool. “It should make no difference to the customer how we do production – we adapt.” In order to remain as flexible as possible, SAPRO also works with solutions such as Asura and Solvero from OneVision that guarantee the quality of the output files. The result is either a finished PDF or, depending on the publishing house concerned, an EPS file.

SAPRO uses a simple but very effective workflow for the Rheinische Post. This mainly involves colour conversion. The customers use the in baskets with names such as “2C” or “3C” to have his ads converted into the correct colour combination. SAPRO takes over these EPS or PDF files to carry out the corresponding correct colour conversion and correct naming of the colours. After conversion, a new EPS or PDF is automatically produced and returned to the customer via FTP. A simple, but enormously effective workflow – especially when the volume of production data or newspaper pages respectively is taken into consideration that SAPRO manages daily.

Markus Schulz sums up: “Workflow is the mainstay of our production, in which we wholly adapt to the requirements of our customers. The tool we uses for this is CaslonFlow.” For the future, IT administrator Markus Schütz would like to see CaslonFlow further developed in the direction of load balancing and cluster capability. This would enable more valuable time to be saved.

About SAPRO Satzproduktions-Gesellschaft mbH

SAPRO Satzproduktions-Gesellschaft mbH, based in Gutenacker, Germany, is a classical full-service operation for ad composition, layout, make-up, scanning and digital ad processing. SAPRO also runs its own call centre for ad-taking for its various customer projects in the newspaper and magazine sector. 118 personnel work daily at three locations (Gutenacker, Koblenz and Mülheim-Kärlich) for leading customers, such as Mittelrhein-Verlag, Bonner Generalanzeiger, Rheinische Post in Düsseldorf, Paul Parey Verlag, “Such & Find” and the Rhein-Main publishing group. The company is headed by Wilfried Wehnert and Markus Schulz. E-Mail: info@sapro.de