Reach­ing 991, 000 read­ers in south­ern Fin­land in print and on­line, ESM em­ploys ap­prox­i­mate­ly 300 em­ploy­ees in 18 dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions and is part of the Keskisuo­ma­lainen me­dia com­pa­ny group.

ESM pre­vi­ous­ly used Any­graaf´s Doris ed­i­to­r­i­al sys­tem and Aprof­it-ad sys­tem. Same time with Neo project servers and data­base were trans­ferred from Tu­usu­la of­fice to Keskisuo­ma­lainen con­cerns head­quar­ter in Jyväskylä. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, the AProf­it ad sys­tem was con­sol­i­dat­ed in­to the com­pa­ny group’s com­mon data­base.

Etelä-Suomen Me­dia’s pa­pers, mag­a­zines and jour­nals are:

Aamu­posti, Helsin­gin Uutiset, Hyvinkään Vi­ikkouutiset, Ima­tralainen, Kes­ki-Uusi­maa, Lappeen­ran­nan Uutiset, Län­si-Uusi­maa, Län­si-Uusi­maa Il­ta, Län­siväylä, Mäntsälän Uutiset, Nur­mi­jär­ven Uutiset, Ri­ihimäen Seudun Vi­ikkouutiset, Sipoon Sanomat, Tam­pere­lainen, Turku­lainen, Tu­usu­lan­jär­ven Vi­ikkouutiset, Uusi­maa, Van­taan Sanomat, Vi­hdin Uutiset, Aro­mi, Shak­er, Even­to, Moot­tori, I love La­p­land, It In­va­lidili­it­to, Kirkon­seu­tu, Maint­world, Matkus Shop­ping, Mei­dän Suo­mi, Nav­i­ga­tor, Ota opik­si, Pati­na, Pop­pi, Port of Helsin­ki Mag­a­zine, Port of Helsin­ki News, Pro­maint, Solisti, Vav-vi­esti, Visi­it­ti, 90 min, Il­ta­makasi­i­ni and Tallinna24.

http://ete­la­suomen­media.fi/lehdet/

The com­pa­ny us­es Any­graaf´s lay­out dri­ven work­flow con­cept in all it´s news­pa­pers. All pa­pers (ex­cept one Kes­ki-Uusi­maa) are pro­duced in a Cit­rix en­vi­ron­ment.

"Work­flow changed im­me­di­ate­ly"

Pub­li­ca­tion man­ag­er Sil­ja Ten­hunen, who was in charge of Neo-project, says that the first phase of the project made changes im­me­di­ate­ly. For ex­am­ple, the pro­duc­tion of lay­outs in larg­er pa­pers and their edi­tions in the capi­tol area, the net­work per­for­mance and the im­age pro­duc­tion work­flow im­me­di­ate­ly re­al­ized ben­e­fits from Neo.

What were the main rea­sons to move from pre­vi­ous Doris in­to new Neo?

- We want­ed to use Neo as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, so that we can de­vel­op a pro­gram at the same time we plan con­tent re­forms to come. The aim was that all the ideas from prac­ti­cal work can be uti­lized as a source when we will de­vel­op work­ing meth­ods dur­ing year 2016.

- De­ci­sion to choose Neo was al­so based on the rapid growth of on­line news­pa­pers: for ex­am­ple, in Helsin­gin Uutiset (free city pa­per in Helsin­ki area) mea­sured 210,000 on­line read­ers each week in De­cem­ber, which was a new record. Neo need­ed to be put in­to use im­me­di­ate­ly so that we can de­vel­op dy­nam­ic pro­duc­tion of on­line news in par­al­lel with our print prod­ucts..

What were the most chal­leng­ing top­ics in this change?

- No sys­tem can be put in­to ser­vice on­ly for the sake of the sys­tem it­self or the re­place­ment of the pri­or so­lu­tion. The sys­tem users must un­der­stand why change is now, what sys­tem’s goals are for next year and how the sys­tem will be de­vel­oped.

- The biggest chal­lenge in this kind of projects is not achiev­ing tech­ni­cal suc­cess, but the tol­er­ance of not ful­ly know­ing the fu­ture, be­ing able to con­cep­tu­al­ize fu­ture needs, and most im­por­tant­ly, not mak­ing de­ci­sions that will rule rapid­ly emerg­ing trends..

- User train­ing al­so plays a key role. If af­ter six months, a sin­gle user doesn´t feel that the new sys­tem has im­proved day to day op­er­a­tions, the change was not suc­cess­ful.

Were there fac­tors oth­er than the in­tro­duc­tion of Neo such as the de­vice en­vi­ron­ment that im­pact­ed meth­ods of work and work­flow?

- Yes. The aim of the ex­change sys­tem was to use and de­vel­op Neo as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, project al­so change - and it is sup­posed to change – work­ing meth­ods. Neo-project's first phase moved im­me­di­ate­ly, for ex­am­ple, the mak­ing lay­out for large capi­tol area pa­pers and their edi­tions, al­so net­work and video pro­duc­tion work­flow.

This was a large project, which was car­ried out in a short pe­ri­od of time. How was it pos­si­ble?

- When chang­ing ed­i­to­r­i­al sys­tems it is com­mon to al­so change for­mat and lay­out as well. We chose to fo­cus on the sys­tem rather than mak­ing styl­is­tic changes to our prod­ucts; the ed­i­to­r­i­al sys­tem was changed first be­fore next con­tent and lay­out re­form. This al­lowed a faster than or­di­nary tran­si­tion to Neo.

What are the most crit­i­cal re­sults of this project’s com­ple­tions?

- When you have been work­ing with an ed­i­to­r­i­al sys­tem for a long time and then it is changed, de­part­ing from fa­mil­iar ways of work­ing may seem strange. It’s im­por­tant to re­mem­ber at the train­ing stage – that teach­ing can­not con­cen­trate on­ly on what is chang­ing but rather, what op­por­tu­ni­ties are be­ing gained. There has to be al­ways be an aware­ness of those steps that are not chang­ing too..

- This is for our project staff and sys­tem de­sign­ers an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn and to re­veal which work­flows, prac­tices and poli­cies need re­vi­sion and which do not.

How did users re­act to the project gen­er­al­ly and to Neo specif­i­cal­ly?

- The first phase of the Neo-project suc­ceed­ed be­cause users were will­ing to tran­si­tion from Doris to Neo - even though it oc­curred dur­ing the busiest time of the year, and be­cause the tim­ing was unique, our staff adapt­ed.

- The sys­tem’s ben­e­fits on­ly starts at that point. Each prod­ucts has a new jump­ing off point for con­tent cre­ation and pub­lish­ing. There­fore, the most im­por­tant phase of the en­tire project is now and must fo­cus on ex­pand­ing Neo with users in to the sys­tem so that we can pro­duce our prod­ucts, and even to es­tab­lish new meth­ods in the fu­ture.

Are there al­ready thoughts about fol­low­ing top­ics?

- Yes. The biggest chal­lenge in the com­ing years is not just how com­pelling we are able to make our prod­ucts for our read­ers, or what kind of dig­i­tal prod­ucts we need on­line. One of the ma­jor chal­lenges is dig­i­tal­iza­tion of the print pro­duc­tion process.

- Ed­i­to­r­i­al staff will need more time to make con­tent in­to mul­ti-chan­nel prod­ucts and to pro­duce high-qual­i­ty print con­tent. This re­quires re­form of work process­es. In ad­di­tion to the lay­out dri­ven work­flow, tools and meth­ods for mak­ing print mag­a­zine pro­duc­tion more ef­fi­cient must be adopt­ed by our staff and dri­ven by Neo’s de­ploy­ment..

- The next step is the in­tro­duc­tion of cen­tral­ized pro­duc­tion out­put for these pa­pers, in which the print house is print­ing hun­dreds of pages in on­ly a few hours for those print­ing evenings. Then we be­gin to purge print mak­ing process step by step. The aim is that the re­designed print pa­pers are in pro­duc­tion be­fore the sum­mer.

How many pa­pers are made and how many pages are print­ed among the best days?

-In print, the busiest days of the week are Mon­day, Tues­day, Thurs­day and Fri­day - it’s on­ly on Wednes­days and week­ends that the print house will not be print­ing a num­ber of news­pa­pers and city mag­a­zines.

- For ex­am­ple, on Thurs­day, 17.12. there was four news­pa­pers (2 edi­tions of Aamu­posti, Kes­ki-Uusi­maa, Län­si-Uusi­maa, Uusi­maa), 3 edi­tions of Helsin­gin Uutiset, 2 edi­tions of Van­taan Sanomat, Län­siväylä with re­placed pages con­cept, Turku­lainen, Nur­mi­jär­ven Sanomat and Mäntsälän Uutiset – all to­geth­er more than 320 pages to the print house. Just an or­di­nary night.

The con­cerns a uni­fied ad sys­tem

Etelä-Suomen Me­dia is part of the larg­er me­dia con­cern Keskisuo­ma­lainen. In Keskisuo­ma­lainen Neo has been in use in all re­gion­al news­pa­pers as well as in lo­cal news­pa­pers. Last au­tumn, the com­pa­ny changed to a com­mon ad sys­tem as well. Any­graaf’s AProf­it is now in use through­out the whole com­pa­ny, all to­geth­er a to­tal of 60 pa­pers, mag­a­zines and jour­nals. Neo and AProf­it-users num­ber about 500 through­out the Keskisuo­ma­lainen con­cerns.

A sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the of Neo-project was uni­fy­ing the AProf­it ad sys­tem in­to the com­mon data­base of Keskisuo­ma­lainen con­cern - so that all cus­tomer re­la­tion­ships, sales man­age­ment and mon­i­tor­ing, ad book­ing and ma­te­r­i­al man­age­ment, billing and re­port­ing da­ta was avail­able..

- Mov­ing to a cen­tral­ized ad man­age­ment sys­tem en­ables the use of the same cus­tomer da­ta mod­el through­out the en­tire con­cern. The re­sult a a uni­fied pack­age of sales man­age­ment and cen­tral­ized me­dia pro­duc­tion tools for ac­count­ing. Ad­ver­tis­ing bills made by sub­sidiaries are avail­able through­out the com­pa­ny to any of­fice in­volved with sell­ing an ad.. In­ter­nal billing built in­to AProf­it can pro­duce in­ter­nal in­voic­es from sub­sidiary com­pa­nies, says Any­graaf sys­tem de­sign­er Mi­ka Aal­to.

http://ete­la­suomen­media.fi/

More in­for­ma­tion

Etelä-Suomen Me­dia Oy, Pub­li­ca­tion Man­ag­er Sil­ja Ten­hunen, sil­ja.ten­hunen[at]me­dia.fi.

Any­graaf Oy, (Neo) Sys­tem Spe­cial­ist Svante Ahlroth, svante.ahlroth[at]any­graaf.fi

Any­graaf Oy, (AProf­it) Sys­tem An­a­lyst Mi­ka Aal­to, mi­ka.aal­to[at]any­graaf.fi